Counterbore

A counterbore in a metal plate

In machining, a counterbore (symbol: ) is a cylindrical flat-bottomed hole that enlarges another coaxial hole, or the tool used to create that feature. A counterbore hole is typically used when a fastener, such as a socket head cap screw or fillister head screw, is required to sit flush with or below the level of a workpiece's surface.

Whereas a counterbore is a flat-bottomed enlargement of a smaller coaxial hole, a countersink is a conical enlargement of such. A spotface often takes the form of a very shallow counterbore.

As mentioned above, the cutters that produce counterbores are often also called counterbores; sometimes, to avoid ambiguity, the term counterbore cutter is used instead.

The symbol is Unicode character U+2334 COUNTERBORE.