Drill Press – found my mojo again (well, most of it)

This was one of those days where you spend 1.5 hours setting up for 15 minutes of cutting. I was really careful, and got the drill press table level, then installed a stop block parallel to the bit, then tilted the table, got my workpiece all set up, decided to move the stop block for more repeatable work placement, was 100% ready to go… and had to move the table up, because the bit couldn’t plunge that far. 😐

Raise the table (which messed up all the alignment, but I could set the plunge depth properly), re-level, redo all the alignment, stop block, tilt &c, and then I was pretty much ready to cut.

Doesn’t look like much, but that took a *lot* of setup.

What with one thing and another, I decided that doing the rake angle at the same time as the splay angle was called for. So I gritted my teeth, added some indicator arrows to the block so I could confirm I’d done it right, and ran off a test block.

Those are some in-line truss poles 🙂

With a success under my belt, I cut 5 more blanks (5″ chunks of 2×4) on the table saw, and got started drilling the holes.

I really love the huge wood flakes produced by Forstner bits.

Here’s what’s sitting under all that swarf.

Pretty easy, once it’s all set up properly.

I did all the right-hand holes first, so I didn’t have to shift the jig around.
Then I swapped the jig (you need to rotate 30º for one hole, and -30º for the other), and cut the other side.

Looks pretty good

With all the holes drilled, I needed to cut them lengthwise with the table saw, to turn them into clamps. Let me be the first to say that a cross-cut sled is not the right tool for this job. But, I don’t have a working fence at the moment, so I had to make do. I still have all my fingers, but I hated this part a lot.

There is just no good way to clamp the workpiece in this configuration. Grr.

I was pretty excited to see whether my clamps would work.

With even a couple clamps installed, the truss will stand on its own.

And, after scouring the shop for enough clamps to finish the job (you can never have enough clamps), suddenly I had a fairly sturdy 6-pole truss!

Top and bottom blocks parallel, I call that a win.

Setting up to cut pole clamps is still a real pain. I really need to figure out how to cut them using my CNC’d jig (or a variant thereof), or else pole seats are going to continue to be a barrier to entry for future builds.

I decided not to take a photo of the slight misalignment of the pole holes. I think it’ll still work ok once I get them installed. And if not, I’m not moving the drill press table anytime soon. 🙂