Wear resistant surface coatings, particularly those of Titanium Nitride (TiN) have been sucessfully applied to HSS cutting tools. Recently a ″second gemeratopm″ of new PVD coatings have been deposited on HSS substrates. In this paper, new alloy nitirde coatings, including TiAIN, TiZrN and TiCN, produced by either the ″steered Arc' or 'Magnetron Sputtering' techniques are considered and their performance compared with conventional bright finished drills and 'standard' TiN coatings on twist drills.