What is "brace and bit"

Usage examples of "brace and bit".

Finally, using the brace and bit, he drills the holes for the rivets.

Then it was three holes with the brace and bit, some smoothing, and some more cleaning out, and then the glue.

Then he laid aside the brace and bit, and took the keyhole saw, with which he patiently sawed through the wood between contiguous holes, until, the circle completed, he lifted out a section of the floor leaving an aperture large enough to permit him to squeeze his body through when the time arrived for him to pass into the bank beneath.