My Shop

The topic of this My Shop session is my drill press - pictured to the left. It's called a "bench top" because, well, it's designed to sit on the top of a bench, or in my case the top of a cabinet. As you can see, a drill press is kind of a hand drill on steroids. It's larger and heavier with a much larger motor than a drill. Because of this it can drill larger holes with more accuracy and control. A couple of years ago, I made a tub caddy from oak for my daughter. She wanted a recess for a large round candle and I used my drill press to create that recess. The hole was 3 inches in diameter, so the bit was pretty big. Cutting a hole that size in oak using a hand drill would have been tough. Using the drill press made it so much easier. Trying Last week, I built a coat/hat rack for a new client and he wanted some hardware on the back to use to hang it on his wall. The hardware needed to be recessed so I used the drill press to create a series of parallel, overlapping holes and cleaned up the sides of the recess with a chisel. On some pieces, I use screws to fasten two pieces of wood together and I definitely don't want the screw heads showing. So, I countersink (recess) the screw heads below the surface of the wood and cover the hole with plugs cut from the same kind of wood. I often use the drill press for the holes for the screws (especially if I want to be precise with the depth of the countersink) and also to cut the plugs. (February, 2023)