Tuesday, October 29, 2013

"Shouldda Done It 2-Years Ago" - Drill-Press Tray

I'm certain some of you will identify with this problem: any available horizontal surface gets filled in my shop. The handiest one is the drill-press table as it is the first thing when I walk in and I don't use the drill press that often. When I do, oh, big chore emptying it for one or two holes.

This was one of those "I should have done this years ago" ideas. You don't need fancy scrap for it; I just happened to have found some nice stuff when the temperature broke a bit and I cleaned the other side of the garage.  That's the side where things get thrown in summer because nobody wants to be in that kiln to place something properly.

Oh, and you read that correctly.... one minute, twenty one seconds. Crazy.



In other news, I'm working on the drawer boxes for Angle Madness; these are required to properly place the drawer runners and kickers as you'll see in the next Angle Madness video. It's finally getting cooler and I'm eager to spend a whole weekend in there making progress with the garage door open!

11 comments:

  • Anonymous said...
     

    I love that you have an anvil on the tray. Makin' things easy for yourself, eh?

    Chris

  • Anonymous said...
     

    What you really need is a sub-table for your drill press that attaches to the column and sits just above the working table. Then you just swivel it to the side when you need to drill holes.

    Chris

  • HalfInchShy said...
     

    The anvil is to give me a small workout each time I need to move it. I've seen tables that pivot like you mention; actually the WCR-1000 has one and I like being able to swing it around. The tray is just easier especially since I have more junk on there than a reasonable table would hold, anvil included!

  • Anonymous said...
     

    I did the same thing. Except my horizontal surface of choice is the garage refrigerator top. Any time I needed to move it, I had to unload it. So I built a shelf that sits about two inches above the fridge top. All my junk sits comfortably on the shelf and the fridge slides in and out from underneath easily now.

  • HalfInchShy said...
     

    Ah a close-proximity shelf; have a few of those around, too. Also built a 3-sided box with a top to enclose the water softener and filter because at the time, I was building a 12' long cabinet and was concerned I'd nail the glass filter bottle with cabinet parts. Now the whole top is loaded :-/ No horizontal surface is sacred! ...except the floor :)

  • pmelchman said...
     

    yes....a video.......

  • Brian said...
     

    shortest p-m video ever! hahaha I love it. I built a cabinet underneath my drill press (bc how often do you lower the table) that can easily be moved if I need to lower the table. It has a horizontal surface on top of it that collects quite a bit... and the drill press table still collects stuff!

  • HalfInchShy said...
     

    Yes, Patrick, a video of the dovetails. The last ones were too long ago and the shop was 104F when I recorded the video. The most brutal video to record! 73F right now. ...and I know this is important because there are just no videos on dovetails out there on the Internets...

  • HalfInchShy said...
     

    The cabinet under my drill press table has the same function, Brian... couple Systainers and a drawer of the specialty planes. There are small clamps and AA battery chargers on the top directly under the table. I mounted power-tool battery chargers on the back of that cabinet and racks of saws on the right side, "nice" planes on the left. Completely used space!

    So yeah this was a really short "P-M" video... but I'm looking at the clips recorded. The high-speed section was 40 minutes of edited footage (so, longer on disk), the initial 'problem demo' was 3 then add the dialog I kept, which I always record twice. 1m20 has nearly 45 minutes of video on disk... -sigh- it's nuts....

    Tonight's recording is getting imported now. 4 hours of footage between the cameras. Will likely end up 20 minutes as a final. More crazy would be how much sculpting it would take to do these in claymation...

  • Peter Durand said...
     

    Good idea. I see you have the same drill press as I do. Gotta ask: what are those martian antenna thingies sticking out of the screw holes on the top?

  • HalfInchShy said...
     

    Hi, Peter,

    Those antennae are legs for the shelf you see above the drill press. I store my power-tool batteries there, drill index, and the Ti-15. The top of the drill press is all round (reminds me of the head of the alien in Aliens). I wanted to take advantage of that space with the shelf. Took 3 dowel sections and tapered them down so they would fit in the holes (and seat themselves onto the heads of the screws within; didn't want the plastic doing all the work). Very stable and very handy for the drill index.