A gentleman at saws was selling off his old tools and I picked up his old 11″ drill press for $70. It’s excellent. It’s a relic from the days when tools were simple and solid.
It’s got a big heavy 1/2 HP motor (vs. 1/8 on my old 8″ drill press). I drilled a bunch of 1″ mortises with this machine and it was fantastic. It had no problem what-so-over with worth that I’m certain would have stalled my other machine.
The actual drill press table is reasonably large but what you see in the picture is my home-made drill press extension table that’s bolted on.
The table itself doesn’t have any way to pivot which is fine before I’ve never used it on my current drill press and it’s just one more thing to not be square.
I love all the exposed belts. This is definitely a bad machine to use if you have long hair.
My immediate plans for this machine are to throw out the base and replace it with home-made cabinets on wheels. Then I have some place to store drill bits, drum sanders and drilling jigs.
It’s the honey crueller / double chocolate donut burger.
I upgraded the fence on my Incra Miter Gauge to something a bit more functional on the weekend.
It now has a 18″ x 4″ x 1″ Baltic birch auxiliary fence with a Incra T-Track / rule which will me life a lot quicker when doing repetitive cuts < 18″. Normally I would still use the cross-cut sled except for pieces whose width or depth exceeds the capacity of my sled.
Fence installed on my Incra V27 Miter Gauge.
Close up of the rule and adjustable stop.
I switched out the main woodworking vise on my workbench to this one from Busy Bee. The Lee Valley one I used previously (Regular Front Vise) had a real problem with raking which was getting annoying. The “Groz” vise cost me a lot less ($35) and, while admittedly a lot less stylish, has large metal faces on both sides that hold things much more securely than I was getting with the LeeValley one. I mounted it a bit low so that I could wrap the jaw liners over the top edge (you can see that in the pic) to protect my tools from accidentally hitting the cast iron of the vise itself.
I came across something very similar on the Internet but can’t remember where now. Anyways, this is a rack to store my scrapers. It’s made from walnut and maple. Nothing too fancy other than, and you can’t really see this, the walnut part is curved up on each end which is something I’d never done before.
I upgraded my table saw and removed the cheesy metal legs and replaced them with a serious plywood cabinet with some storage. The drawers finally give me a convenient place to store all the push sticks, replacement throats, miter guages, etc that otherwise have been scattered all over the shop.
It’s all cheap 3/4″ plywood. I think it’s almost two sheets worth of it (so roughly $60). The bottom is a sandwich of two sheets of plywood with dadoed 4″ strips of plywood on end to give some rigidity. I didn’t want stuff sagging.
Also, because my router is attached to the end of the saw, it’s a great place to store my router stuff like bits.
Inspired by the fine folks at Bacon Today I made bacon brownies for the office today. So far people are actually trying them but I’m disappointed. They really aren’t quite as tasty as they sound.
