Bench Pillar Drill

[Harry Bloomfield]

mick explained :

Yes, they are like all drills of this design - top heavy. I only use mine for relatively small items which well within the base and it works fine.

[Jon Fairbairn]

What I've done with mine is make a piece of 50mm square wood that's somewhat longer than the width of the base of the drill with two 10mm(?) coach bolts sticking up out of it (spaced for the holes in the base of the drill). I loosely clamp the wood in a workmate, lower the bench drill onto the bolts, fasten it to the wood with a couple of wing nuts (and penny and shake-proof washers) and tighten up the workmate. This doesn't hold it as solidly as bolting it to a real bench would*, but it won't fall over and you don't have to have a permanent bench (of course, I want a permanent bench, but that's another issue).

The drill is a cheap Chinese import bought for me by a friend. It has several failings, but even so it has been very useful. (Of course, just after they gave me it, a better one appeared in Aldi for less than they'd paid). The main problem is that there's no way of raising and lowering the bed vertically without risk of rotation -- you just have to unclamp it and shove it, so if you want to drill with a different bit on the same centre and the bit's too long to go in without lowering the workpiece, you have to line it all up again. If you can get one with a bed that you can crank up and down without it slopping from side to side, do!

• mainly because the workmate is crap. A good design trashed by cost engineering.

Recently I've put some T-nuts through the workmate, so I'm thinking of bolting a slab of blockboard to the bottom of the drill and using wing-/bolts/ through that into the T-nuts. That would be more solid, I think. Why do none of the shops round here have wing-bolts?

[meow2222]

Easily worked around, if its bolted down. Use a little rope plus a weight looped over

easily replaced for =A35

easily removed. I know, some will howl, but these things are better controlled than hand held drills, and no-one seriously suggests a need for a safety guard on those.

no, thats a genuine risk

NT

[Jules]

The main hassle I've had with the smaller bench-top ones is with drilling holes at an angle toward the ends of a long piece of wood - as you say, there's a lot more room 'under' a floor-standing one.

(and on that note, the 'table' on my bench-top one sits *above* its horizontal pivot point, which means that if you want the table at anything other than 90 degrees to the shaft, the hole in the table won't line up with the headstock any more - my previous bench-top had the table aligned with the pivot, which seemed far more sensible)

At the cheaper end, it seems to be the difference between about $100 and $150 on this side of the pond. If you've got the space, it's probably worth the extra money. cheers

Jules

[PeterC]

Agreed! The best that I ever used was an old GF's house where I had a mitre saw screwed to the floor in a 12'x27' room - great for the skirting and picture rail. She actually liked it being there and did consider leaving it when the carpet was replaced; there aren't many women who are that understanding, but she's keen on gadgets.

[Pete Verdon]

I have what's probably the same machine, for a few quid more at Machine Mart (didn't know Aldi did them, till the shop was full of them the following week, grr).

I certainly wouldn't use it freestanding; I extended one of the benches in my workshop into a little platform to bolt it to. I agree with Rod on the safety guard - complete pain in the arse. It looks to me like an afterthought added to satisfy regulations in the European market, and not part of the actual design. I took it off; it's not as though handheld drills have them and I think I'd have to be really trying to get my hand in the way of this thing. Other than that, my experience has been much better than Rod's - maybe mine would end up in that knackered state eventually, but not for a while given the limited use, and at the price I don't really care.

Cheers,

Pete

[dennis]

On mine you can turn it around so it overhangs the bench.

[Steve Walker]

The kids don't need a bedroom *each* it's just wasteful...

[Harry Bloomfield]

Chris J Dixon explained :

..and not one post about Aldi/Lidl rubbish :-)

I popped in there (Aldi) yesterday to see what was on offer, the place was absolutely heaving with customers like I have never seen before. By contrast Tesco/Sainsbury/etc.'s car parks seem to be relatively empty. The roads are also relatively quiet even during the rush hour, the recession is biting.

[ScrewMaster]

I still have my old Startrite Mercury - bought second hand 25 years ago. I never thought it would last but it's proved me wrong. It's a great little drill

[Frank Erskine]

I called into Debenhams on Friday. Whilst on the escalator going from the first to the second floor I didn't see one customer at all (or member of staff for that matter, but they tend to hide behind things :-)

'Twas heaving today (Sunday) though...

[Frank Erskine]

I bought a cheapie from a private ad in the local paper some time ago

- I think I got it for 10 quid or so; probably half its original price :-) The starter/NVR was knackered but I got another from CPC (costing just a bit more, ISTR!) which I had to bodge a bit to install, but it seems to work fine for me. I bolted it to a corner of a workbench, diagonally for accessibility.

Actually "Bench Pillar Drill" is a bit of an oxymoron. A bench drill mounts on the bench; a pillar drill mounts on the floor, traditionally.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Heh heh - I had to drive to Leatherhead this afternoon setting out at 2. Thought I'd just go along the high street to the A24 it being a Sunday. Solid. More traffic than on a weekday morning in rush hour.

[Jules]

Hmm, you can unbolt mine from the base and turn it through 90 degrees, but I'm not sure if that's an intentional design feature or not :-)

I suspect I'll wait a year or so and buy a floor-standing pillar drill to complement the current one - you can never have too many tools!

cheers

J.

[Appin]

The message from [e-mail] (Andrew Gabriel) contains these words:

Agreed, 100%. It's about the most useful tool in the workshop.

With a reasonable swing table to hold a selection of bits ready for use it really speeds up any number of jobs simply because it's ready to use without any significant setting up time.