[TheForge] Drill Press

[Ries Niemi]

Mark- you are going to have to determine what taper your drill press 
arbor is.
this can  be done one of two ways. You can measure it, with precision 
measuring tools.
Or you can check known it against known morse tapers.

then you will need to do the same thing with your chuck. Most likely 
the chuck is a jacobs taper, and the drill press a morse taper, but 
either one of them could be a screwball taper, which would make the 
whole thing very difficult.

Offhand guess is that the drill press is a morse no. 2, and the chuck a 
jacobs no. 1, and you can buy an adapter from MSC (mscdirect.com, 
search for drill chuck arbors- morse to jacobs)  for under 20 bucks. A 
jacobs adapter would be 16.85, and albrect would be 18.82 for the same 
part.

If there is a big industrial machinist supply place near you, you could 
take the chuck in,and try out different tapers, but the drill press is 
a little more work.
The dimensions of morse and jacobs tapers can be found in Machinery's 
Handbook- this is a book that, as a metalworker, you should own anyway. 
Used copies on Abebooks.com for only about 10 bucks.
And the older ones actually have info on blacksmithing in them so the 
older ones are better than a new one for us.
Then you need a caliper to measure the diameter and length of the 
tapers, to compare against the tables in Machinery's handbook- anywhere 
from 15 bucks to several hundred, depending on quality. But a handy 
thing to have around, for precision measuring. I have done just fine 
with a 25 dollar vernier caliper for many years. Again, you can get one 
from MSC.

The other thing you could do is find an old machinist to help you out- 
they will already have the book with the taper dimensions, a caliper or 
micrometer for measuring them, and know how to do it. Often they will 
also have a drawer full of old drill bits with morse tapers on the end, 
so you could take one home and check fit.

But this is an imminently do-able project- adapters are made, and 
available off the shelf, in probably 40 different combos- one of them 
will fit your drill press/ chuck combo.

ries