Sunday, December 17, 2017

Shop project: Drill press table

I swear I've had the pieces for this thing sitting around the shop for at least six months, it not more. The piece of MDF I wanted to use for the table has been around so long that all of my other scraps of 1/2" MDF hanging around the workshop are from a completely separate pieee that I bought for some other project.

Anyway, here's what I'm working with:



Some notes about that there particular set up:

  • The throat depth (between the stand and the chuck) is really not very deep at all. 
  • The handle at the back that raises and lowers the table sticks out far enough that it comes up beside the table. Which means that the new table has to sit forward far enough for the handle to clear the back edge. 
  • That table is tiny. And impossible to clamp anything to.
  • With so little room at the back, I need something reversible so I can set it up in FRONT of the chuck. 
  • I need an adjustable fence and stop block - or else what's the point of having a drill press table, really?
After a lot of mid-process design changes (what else is new?) and a few false starts, here's what I got!




The fence can be set up either behind the chuck, or in front of it if the desired hole placement is more than a couple inches from the edge. Which is good, because after setting the table far enough forward to clear the stupid handle, there's not a lot of room left...


(The black dot in front of the two screw heads is where the drill bit hits... when the table is actually centered, anyway.)

So much more clamping space, adjustable integrated stop block, and constructed almost entirely out of bits I had lying around the shop (for the past forever)!

Anyway, it feels great to get that finally off my plate., and the pieces for it off the bench. So I can store the parts of the next project there. Oops.

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