Progress, thy name is “Drill Press”.
After several frustratingly inaccurate drill holes from last night, I knew that my hand drill accuracy was not going to be sufficient to complete this job. Seeing my frustration, my ever-accomodating wife (may the sun always smile upon her) told me to go get one.
I checked craigslist. If you live in/near Fremont and need a serious drill press, there’s one on there for $140 that your grandkids will use in their wood- or metal-shops. The problem is that, being a floor-standing model, it weighs… well, a lot. This is not something you want to wrestle out to the backyard for a little sawdust-making-in-the-sun.
So I checked Home Depot (and Lowe’s, Sears, OSH,…) and found a 12″ (which really means 6″, but don’t get me started) Ryobi benchtop drill press, weighing in at a svelte 92lb., and for which I paid $169 + tax. w00t!
Let me start by saying that this is the right size drill press for me. 92 pounds is no joke to lug around. And 6″ is exactly the amount of room I need in order to do this build (the cuts on the table bed are all 6″ from the edge — hmm (: ).
Some assembly required. That was pretty fun, as you’d imagine. Like any “real” shop tool, part of the installation instructions call for whacking the brand new tool with a mallet (I am not making this up). That’s how you install the chuck and arbor into the spindle. Seriously. It was totally cool! (:
Once I got the rig put together, Kristi cut the first hole with the new drill. I forbade her to whack it with a bottle of champagne. That’s just too much. BTW, the unit has an RPM readout and a pair of lasers that tell you where the cut is going! schwing. The RPM readout is a little over the top, but the lasers are so awesome I could cry. You want to be at the other end of a big chunk of plywood and figure out whether the bit is going into those pencil lines you just drew? It’s a beautiful thing.
I spent some time trying to figure out how to position the drill bit in the world such that I could put some wood near it (again, something that’s trickier than you think when the drill bit in question weighs more than both your kids put together). I ended up with the drill standing on the router table (finally that thing comes in handy (: ), standing on a sturdy wooden platform (the boxes that the Chinese tiles came in are really burly!), and with the sawhorses at their lowest adjustment, and with a shim here and there, I could get the plywood level.
Note that this would not be a problem for most regular sizes of wood, but the router table consists of two quarter-sheets of 3/4″ plywood, a chunk 2’x4’x1.5″, weighing about 50#, which is OK, since it’s also a little awkwardly large, too. Oh, and the holes I’m drilling are the ones that will be bolting them together, so they are still clamped with 4 or 5 clamps around the perimeter. It was a joy to wrestle that stupid thing around. I look forward to unclamping it as soon as it’s all drilled.
Now that I was set up, I started with correcting the erroneous 7/16″ through-holes from last night.
And this is the moment where I go a little dewy-eyed.
In a word, wow. Drilling with a drill press is dead simple. Set up the wood, set up the bit, fire up the machine, and wham. Straight hole. Just like that. Move the wood to the next hole, fire up the machine, wham. That one’s straight now too. In about 5 minutes, I’d fixed all 3 bad holes from last night.
So I measured and drilled the 7/16″ holes at the other end of the table.
And I counterbored all 4 of the remaining holes for through-bolting the table together. I even had to switch from “end-on” (drilling the 2′ side) to “side-on” (drilling the 4′ side). Easy.
I finished up, then remembered that I still have four more 7/16″ holes to drill (to hold on the X-axis rails), so I can’t unclamp yet, nor am I going to move the drill yet.
I spent a little time thinking about whether I could figure out how to drill into the edges of the plywood. So far, I haven’t come up with a method that will work, given the geometry of the problem. In particular, I am a little worried about how to secure the base of the drill while I do crazy contortions with the drill head. I might wait until John C gets back in town, then go and drill those holes on his floor-mount drill press. Or I could just use a hand drill.
Or not. (:
I made great progress on the X-table. The “big” pieces are within reach of being complete. To be done:
– four more 7/16″ through holes
– six 1/4″ holes on the end (to attach the legs)
– four 1/4″ holes on the edges (to attach the rails)
– chamfer 3 more edges (that will be a nightmare of setup)
– cut and drill the rail
– attach the rail
and that’s it! Then I can do some stuff that actually requires a saw, cutting the legs.
Once I finish the table, all of the other pieces of the kit are small enough to simply clamp to the drill press to cut. And I think that a majority of them can be cut on the chop saw, once they are carved away from the main sheet of ply.
I just counted it up, and I have 10 cuts to do with the circular saw (because I don’t have a table saw), and the rest devolves into chop saw cuts. There are 24 pieces that need to be cut out, so being able to bang them out on a saw by just lining up and cutting is going to make life very easy. The 10 circular saw cuts will produce 7 atomic pieces, and 4 “primal cuts” that will get broken up by the chop saw.
I’m excited. I really feel like I’m underway!
Not having to worry about drilling is really a load off my mind. Thank you, drill press!