Drill Press Table

Soooo I decided that my drill press table and fence (as you can see in the last picture, it was about as basic as it gets heh) was in DIRE need of an upgrade, and I’m very happy with what I ended up with. Its fairly smallish (I only have a benchtop press, and I dont as of yet have enough free space to give it a permanent home) about 12” deep by 20” wide, but its big enough for my needs right now (also when I store it, I need to mindful of the size, I didn’t want to have to constantly remove and re-bolt it). I wanted to include some t-track for hold-downs and to attach the fence, and also a sacrificial insert in the center.

The base is 3/4” plywood glued down to some 1/2” OSB to give it some extra thickness (no real reason for that combination, I just like to use up the materials I have on hand, and these two pieces happened to be just the right size) topped with 1/8” hardboard for a nice smooth work surface. When I glued down the hardboard, I only glued the ends, so that when I routed out the channels for the t-track, the center piece came off, and voila, theres my removable insert, and in a nice easy size to make more.

The fence is a couple of strips of MDF glued together left from a previous project, I just drilled out for the bolts and routed a slot for the track, and then cut and drilled a couple simple stop blocks.

I made a spacer block that goes underneath the metal table, and drilled and countersunk, added a few bolts and washers, and done and done.

The only real issue I see in hindsight is that I may have made the tracks too wide apart; I realized that there is a sizeable gap between the hold-downs when the ends are as close as possible, but if I’m working on something small enough that its an issue I can always make a jig or something that locks into the existing track.
Also while I did need the removable section to be a certain minimum size to account for the bolts, I didn’t need it as wide as I made it (I think the largest thing I’ve used is a 3” hole saw), but oh well, live and learn, all things to be fixed in Table 2.0 LOL!

Actually, now I think about it, I could probably cut that insert into 3-4 strips a few inches deep each, that way as the center ones get chewed up, I just need to add one or two to push a fresh one into place, rather than replacing the whole thing.

-- - Jei, Rockford IL - When in doubt, spray it with WD-40 and wrap it with duct tape. The details will attend to themselves.