Drill press table

[cteno4]

I finally installed my drill press table after it sitting there for 6 months. Don't know why I didn't install it right after I got it... But man is it nice compared to the old jigs i would throw together and clamp onto the press talble.nice to have a larger table as well for larger work pieces.

 

Jeff

[KenS]

Is this an X/Y table?  What kind?

 

I don't have a drill press (one of my many, "gee, that would be nice" tools).  I can think of a few things that would make an X/Y table useful, but what motivated you to get it?

[Bernard]

A drill press.....this is a power tool that is a great addition to any work room. I remember when I was in high school and worked in my father's button factory drilling holes in buttons on a drill press....it was easy to use and a lot of fun, maybe too much fun....my Dad transferred me to the Warehouse to work the rest of the summer. :)

[cteno4]

Ken,

 

its not an xy table but just a table and fence that fits on top of the standard small table on a drill press. basically the regular drill press table is usually fairly small, even on a good sized drill press, so holding any longer item gets to be a bit of a three handed affair or you have to clamp it down. also they dont come with fence attachments and a fence is something that is really important in anything with uniform holes. fences that you can buy to fit directly onto the cast stock table are usually really hard to adjust easily.

 

a lot of the stuff i end up doing with wood working on the drill press is stuff with repetitive holes in either a long row of them or a bunch of pieces putting the same hole in the same place. in the past i have just thrown together or reused some jigs that were basically a hunk of plywood with a piece of 1x1 nailed to it for a fence. then clamp this sucker onto the drill press table. yeah its cheap, scrap wood and clamps, but it was always a fiddle, clamps would actually sometimes move and they always get in the way. also hard to adjust the whole jig and get it clamped down just right.

 

the table was a simple, but nice one i got on sale at sears. basic fence that can be done high or low with two T rails to adjust it. fence itself is T rail and a nice adjustable stop on the fence face. two big hold down clamps that attach to fence. the table is like 18" deep by 24" wide so nice big, flat surface that is very smooth so one puff and all the sawdust clears off of it (something you have to do between units with jigs as chunks of wood between jig and material is a problem). it has a cute feature i probably wont use much, but the table is actually two pieces hinged together so you can tip the top part up (it has some arms to lock it to your desired position) and have an angled table surface fast to drill at an angle. its cute as they also routed out a channel in the bottom section from the center tap hole out to the side and have a hole out the bottom with a vacuum attachment so it can suck out some there, but really does not do much good as most of the wood chips fly out the top all over anyway, but cute.

 

one last bennie of the big table is that if you have multiple chunks of material you are working with (and most of the projects i do are like this) its wonderful now to have space on the table to have the stock pile and done pile right there and not be moving stuff to the bench. little safety bennie is that anything you do with a tool turned on that has you take your eyes and hands away from the turning part and back again is the place many accidents happen. granted drill presses are not going to take a finger off, but its nice to keep all your eye and hand motions down to a 1' square area and keep things oriented properly on your stock as it goes into the jig.

 

i had gotten it on sale last summer but for some stupid reason i did not take the 30 minutes to install it. dumb as last night in the middle of building my new hobby bench/work table for the office i needed some jigged holes and remembered it was sitting there. bam in 2 minutes i had the 12 holes drilled that needed to be exact to line up perfectly for dowels. i just feel dumb now as im sure there were like 6 or 7 projects done while this was sitting there that i probably spent a couple of hours on total doing drilling that would have been a bang snap done with the new table.

 

i do find i use the drill press so consistently across all forms of projects that its probably one of the tools to not go so cheap on and adding this feature to the decent press i have is a big improvement. for a lot of uses you can get a decent smaller sized drill press on sale for $75-100 that will do fine for small wood working and metal projects as well as train stuff. the are heavy, but only take up a foot or so of bench space.

 

btw i have a tiny xy table for the little jewelers drill press i have in the train shop in the basement. it was not cheap, but got it on sale at micromark for like $75. so far ive only used it to mill a slot in a couple of plastic items. figure i can use it to cheat on the tiny bit of milling i will probably do and mostly in plastic. that one i dont think is going to be as cost effective as the big drill bench table though, it was more that it was just cool as well! Tools have that dumb appeal like this unfortunately.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[KenS]

I've thought of buying a drill press (for non-railroad woodworking projects), but somehow had never realized you could get larger tables than the ones that come with them.  Great info, thanks.

[cteno4]

yeah it really is nice. you can spend from $30-200 on them depending on what you need/want and how fancy you want them. i probably looked at the various ones for like 2-3 years before buying the sears one as it seemed to have the best combo of stuff then went on sale for like $59.

 

like i said, even for little projects its great. not sure if the craftsman would work on the small sized presses, its sort of designed for the mid sized ones, but just looked and it looks like its discontinued!

 

for a small press harbor freight has a little one for $35 that would do fine for small to medium projects/use. really has all the basics you need

 

http://www.harborfreight.com/drill-press-extension-table-with-fence-96395.html

 

it does not have the bells and whistles or metal Tbar fence, but really you dont need that for most things and this would work just fine, especially for a smaller drill press. was a tad too small for mine and i sometimes do larger things that the bigger craftsman model was better for.

 

you can also roll your own easily as well, but its a few evenings of time and probably $40-50 investment in hardware like Tbar stock, knobs and bolts and such. but simple to do. just did not want to add another project to my long list...

 

cheers

 

jeff