13″ Drill Press

First of all, this is not a tool review. I don’t care if you buy this product or not and have no interest in boosting anyone’s sales. That being said, I FINALLY got another drill press. This will be the fourth drill press I have had over the years. The first two were sold due to tough financial times and the last one I owned was sold due to being offered more money than I had in it. Every time I had a drill press in the past I loved it. It’s one of those tools that I usee more often than I thought I would. With some extra Christmas money this year I ended up getting a Central Machinery 13” benchtop drill press.
Drill press (1)
Am I the only one who loves the smell of shipping grease? Yeah, I do like the smell but man did they overdo it with this one. There was actually a puddle of grease in the box after I took the pillar out.
Drill press (2)
For any normal person the assembly would have been an easy task. Not for me though. I’m not sure what I ate that morning or what was going on but I had more dumb moments during the assembly than this thing has nuts and bolts. I think that this is the only part that I didn’t screw up. Putting the base on a stand.
Drill press (3)
Next came mounting the pillar on the base. Because my intended work area was full of sawdust and shavings I stopped for a few minutes to clean up. During that time I managed to suck up two of the four pillar mounting bolts in my dust collector.
Drill press (4)
With the pillar installed I immediately put the head on. That was a mistake. There was way too much sticky packing grease for the table to swivel fluidly so I removed the head and stripped the pillar to clean it with mineral spirits. Like I said it was just one of those days. I spilled around a quarter of a gallon of mineral spirits trying to pour just a little on a rag.
Drill press (5)
I finally ended up getting a semi-clean bowl for the mineral spirits and used a brush to clean the rest of the moving parts. The best lubricant I had on hand was some spray silicone. It’s probably not the best thing to use but oh well, better than nothing.
Drill press (6)
So now we install the table arm, lift rack, and the actual drill press head once more. Do you notice something missing? (other than the obvious)
Drill press (7)
After a good cleaning of the chuck it can be installed. As well as the three handles.
Drill press (8)
And then the table. Did you find what was missing yet?
Drill press (9)
Tadaa! A fully assembled drill press….kinda. After taking the last picture, coming home, and loading them into GIMP I realized that I forgot to install the retaining ring on top of the lift rack on the pillar.
Drill press (10)
In the end I finally got the drill press assembled and after a few cold days out of the shop I tested it out. Hopefully this one sticks around longer than the others. I ended up making a nice drill press table for it. Final conclusion; It’s a drill press and it drills holes.
featured-size-drill-press

5 COMMENTS

  1. Jay, I hope you get a chance to check the run out someday and post that info. I had an inexpensive drill press at one point that I had to get rid of because the run out was so bad.

  2. Are you still using this drill press after a year? I am planning to get it in a couple of days with the 25% coupon. How do you like ti so far? i am a weekend wood worker and wont be using it as much as you do.

    Thank you

  3. Thank you sir for replying, could not make it to HF that weekend to use the coupon. May be when i get the next 20% coupon.

Comments are closed.