Drill Press Table

 

For some time I have been unhappy with my drill press table. I bought this thing at Harbour Freight. I got it cheap because I had no intentions of using it permanently. Unfortunately, because of various reasons, such as just not wanting to get started on it, I still hadn't gotten around to building anything better. This table, actually, is a pretty good one. It probably would be perfect for a smaller, table top version, drill press. For my big floor model though, it just wasn't large enough. One of the advantage to a drill press table is the ability to use a fence. With this small table, the fence went only about two inches past the quill. Therefore, anything with holes further than that from an edge, and you were still without the use of a proper fence.

 

Then I recently seen a neat shop made drill press table on a freind's blog. I immediately thought about building something similar. A few days ago, I set out to do just that. I started taking measurements and planning. As I took a break though, I sat there over coffee and had a thought. What was I doing? Yes, my friend had built one nice table. However, I did not need or want all those neat features he incorporated into his. All I really needed was a simple table that was large enough. Yes, all the bells and whistles are nice, but what good are they if you don't need them?

 

 

So that's what I done. I am happy with this table and it has everything I need in a table. It is large enough. It has a workable fence that slides all the way back to the post, giving me maximum usable capacity. It has a replaceable insert. It has parellel T-track so I can clamp things down if needed. What more can you ask from a drill press table?

 

 

 

I made it out of pecan. I use pecan for a lot of my shop made accessories. There is no special reason for this besides I think it is a beautiful wood and it is stable enough for most things. Because a drill press table needs to stay flat though, I backed this piece of pecan with a three quarter inch piece of plywood.

For now, I'm still using the fence from the old table. I only have three quarter inch thick pecan. I want a solid fence without lamination. So as soon as I can find me a thick enough piece of pecan, I will make a matching fence. Until then, the MDF from the Harbour Freight model will have to do.