[Boatanchors] Harbor Freight

[Rodger]

The little HF drill press isn't bad at all.  I have a big floor standing 
Delta I have had for years but I picked up the little guy on sale for 
$39 several years ago when I was helping my sister-in-law build a 
Pergola at her house.  Among other things it got used a lot with some 
pretty big diameter Forstner bits and did fine.  I have never measured 
the runout on it but unless you are trying to do fine machining you 
shouldn't have a problem.  In the home shop it often gets used with some 
little sanding drums so the other presses don't need to get changed over 
to them.  Like others, I have had good luck with the DVM and I keep a 
little cheap $4 HF DVM in the truck toolbox.

One of the handiest additions to your drill press is the HF cross slide 
vise which can easily be modified to give you the equivalent of a pretty 
effective cheap XY table for your drill press.  Basically you have to 
remount one of the control handles on the vise from the front to the 
back and once clamped to your drill press table it is extremely handy.  
You simply clamp the item you want to drill in the vise so that it is 
fairly close to centered and then use the two crank arms to make fine 
adjustments.  If you are drilling a series of holes in a row you simply 
leave it clamped and adjust either in the X or Y direction without 
having to adjust the other.  I have one that is shared between my 
regular and radial drill presses and another on my Delta mortiser.  I 
think they go on sale fairly often for around $30.

Rodger WQ9E

rbethman wrote:
> Yep!  I have a vise, an anvil, BUT, I did get a small drill press too!
>
> Since I haven't pushed the press beyond 3/8" plate steel, I haven't 
> had any problems.
>
> However, if it was going to be every day use, and heavier steel, I'd 
> shop elsewhere.
>
> Bob - N0DGN
>
> Robert Nickels wrote:
>> rbethman wrote:
>>> Let's face it.  You get what you pay for!  
>> That's why my favorite Harbor Freight tool is the 55 pound ANVIL.   
>> Hard to screw that up ;-)
>>
>> 73, Bob W9RAN
>> _______________________________________________
>>
>