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Contrarily to what some people say, drill bits are not cheap, especially not the good ones. I always see tons of drill bits at my local flee market but I never buy them because sharpening drills is something I've always considered too difficult to do without a special setup (that I can't afford or even justify seeing how a good bit will last for years in a pipemaking shop).

Today this video changed everything for me:
https://youtu.be/UuvyrOuXzDY

This guy is one of the youtube machinists that I follow and here he explains very clearly how to sharpen drills. I found the combination square trick to be amazingly useful. Of course the smaller the bit the more precise you need to be, but I just took a totally beat up 13mm bit to practice on and in a couple of minutes I had it sharpened so that the first test cut in a piece of briar gave me a perfecly smooth hole measuring 13,07mm. I feel I'm a better man now

I try and sharpen good bits. I would never use them on something really size critical though such as a mortice, but that's just me.

Thank you sir for the information

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I learned long ago to sharpen bits by hand. Practice, like anything we do, makes perfect. Also, a Drill Doctor bit sharpener Does work. A bit spendy, but it works. I am comfortable sharpening bits down to 1/8" or so by hand. Just practice.

The purpose of this post was to show that you don't need a drill doctor and that there is not much practice needed if you learn the easy technique and measuring tricks shown in the linked video