Drill Press Table Build Begins
One weakness I discovered during my Roubo build was the ability to set up nice clean repeat drilling on my drill press, and the difficulty with workholding. I nearly stopped halfway through to build a drill press table, but decided I just didn’t have the room to stop, so I made do with a lot of bits of scrap wood clamped all over the table and to each other.
Now that I’ve put the bench into the field, I decided to scratch this particular itch next. I grabbed a piece of spare 3/4″ MDF, some laminate, and went to work, with no particular plan in mind. I started by guestimating I wanted a table roughly 24×18″ or so, given the space in my shop where the drill press is, thats about as big as I can get without interfering with neighboring tools. Any larger probably can’t be properly stabilized by the drill press’s stock cast iron table anyway. I wanted to give the table sufficient strength, so I decided to laminate up two pieces.
First though, I wanted to ensure I had a good way to both hold it down, and adjust it later if necessary. The stock CI drill press table has some X shaped channels, so I made 2 parallel channels that overlapped them roughly in the middle, giving me 4 solid contact points.
I routed out 2 parallel grooves 5/16″, and followed with my T-Track hold down bit. 4 T bolts, and washers and nuts, and this clamps down solidly. The drill press moves before the table does.
I used some spare white laminate from previous projects. (boy, one of those 4×8 sheets lasts you for years!) Out comes the vacuum press and I called it a night.
