I like watching the woodworking shows but my favorite is Roy Underhills "The Woodwright's Shop." 

Sometimes the old ways aren't only good they are ones that work when some modern ones don't.  

I had to replace a concave coulter on my moldboard plow and as they no longer make the coulter my alternative was to take a disk blade and drill it to fit.

I chose an IH earth metal blade as it was the right size and basic concave.  I dropped in on the farm store an purchase a special drill bit that was supposed to drill metal of that type.  I found I could use a regular drill bit to drill the backside of the blade and then it would quit.  I drilled the 4 holes as far as I could and then tried the special bit.  I got one (1) hole drilled and it broke on the cutting edge.  As these cost $21 each that seemed a bit expensive to drill the other holes.

Back to Roy's trip to the blacksmith shop.  There they heated a piece of iron and then placed it over a hole.  Then they took a punch and hammered the punch through the iron making a nice round hole quite quickly.  I took my torch and concentrated the heat on one hole and placed the disk blade over a thick piece of steel with a hole and took my punch and after several blows I had a hole.  

It was a lot more accurate and clean than if I had used the cutting torch.

So, thanks Roy, if I hadn't seen that show I wouldn't have thought of doing it that way.