Drill bit shank shaft and shank, is usually of the same diameter. It is held usually in a three-jaw drill chuck. Bits of diameter too small to grip firmly can have straight shanks of larger diameter than the drill, which can be held firmly in a standard size collet or chuck. Large drill bits can have straight shanks narrower than the drill diameter so that they can be fitted in chucks not able to chuck the full diameter. Such a drill bit is called a reduced-shank or blacksmith's drill. For example, this allows a bit to be used in a pistol-grip drill's chuck.
Drill bit sizes 47/64th and 1 3/4. Drill bit sizes are written down on paper and etched onto bits as irreducible fractions. So, instead of 78/64 inch, or 1 14/64 inch, the size is noted as 1 7/32 inch. Below is a chart providing the decimal-fraction equivalents that are most relevant to fractional-inch drill bit sizes (that is, 0 to 1 by 64ths). (Decimal places for .25, .5, and .75 are shown to thousandths [.250, .500, .750], which is how machinists usually think about them ["two-fifty", "five hundred", "seven-fifty"]. Machinists generally truncate the decimals after thousandths; for example, a 27/64" drill bit may