# drill press



## jeff3285 (Nov 12, 2014)

can anyone tell what drill press is good for drilling pen blanks,,not much runout,,,thank you


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## Mack C. (Nov 12, 2014)

jeff3285 said:


> can anyone tell what drill press is good for drilling pen blanks,,not much runout,,,thank you


It's called a lathe!:biggrin:


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## OOPS (Nov 12, 2014)

There has been a sea change in thinking about drilling blanks over the last two years.  The development of easy attachments for drilling on the lathe make for accurate results.  You might consider drilling on the lathe as an alternative to using a drill press.  I started when the drill press was the recommended tool for drilling.  Now, I use the drill press for drilling wood blanks, and the lathe for drilling acrylic blanks.  I tend to rush through when drilling on the drill press, and that created enough heat to ruin acrylic blanks.  It is easier for me to maintain a leisurely pace when drilling on the lathe, so I don't melt acrylic blanks and ruin them.  I hope this helps.


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## WriteON (Nov 12, 2014)

Ditto on the lathe. I'm hard pressed for space and really had no choice. After a year plus of lathe drilling I swear by it.


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## Jim Burr (Nov 12, 2014)

Assuming you don't have a lathe...the best drill press you can afford. Time for you to do some research.


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## sbell111 (Nov 12, 2014)

I'll disagree with the rest.  A lathe works well for drilling, but it will never be as good at it as a good drill press.  It can drill far more things than pen blanks and gives you the flexibility to easily drill a hole that NOT in the dead center of the item.  

My big Delta gets the job done perfectly.


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## raar25 (Nov 12, 2014)

I bought the rigid floor model because of the travel. Almost all (non-defective) drill presses have small enough runout to do a percission drill.  I find the fixtureing and drill sharpness is far more important and have a much greater impact on the drilled hole results.


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## triw51 (Nov 12, 2014)

for most of my pen blanks I use the lathe, I have one of the Dedicated Pen Blank Drilling Chuck from PSI and that works great.  I use the dril press like Steve for drilling off center and bottle stoppers.  I have an older model craftsman bench top drill press.


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## Lenny (Nov 12, 2014)

Strictly for drilling pen blanks a lathe with a collet chuck is hard to beat. As a bonus, the collet chuck may become your most used accessory in pen making.
but ...
Of course I wouldn't want to give up my drill press for all the other drilling projects. If you know you want a drill press and plan to use it for drilling pen blanks, get one with plenty of Quill travel. Nothing worse than having to stop the tool and redo your setup because your at the limit of your quill travel but haven't reached the depth required for the tube.


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## Mack C. (Nov 12, 2014)

Lenny said:


> Strictly for drilling pen blanks a lathe with a collet chuck is hard to beat.


 kind of difficult to driil a square pen blank using a collet chuck without turning them round first. 





> As a bonus, the collet chuck may become your most used accessory in pen making.


 I agree with you there!




> Of course I wouldn't want to give up my drill press for all the other drilling projects. If you know you want a drill press and plan to use it for drilling pen blanks, get one with plenty of Quill travel. Nothing worse than having to stop the tool and redo your setup because your at the limit of your quill travel but haven't reached the depth required for the tube.


 here as well!


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## Edgar (Nov 12, 2014)

I have a 30 yo Craftsman 13" floor model that I use for all my blank drilling. There are times that I wish I had a longer quill travel, but it's infrequent enough for me that it's only a minor inconvenience.

A lathe setup for drilling blanks will certainly be cheaper than a drill press, but you get more flexibility with a drill press. If you do go that route, get the best one you can afford & definitely a floor model if you have room for it.


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## kovalcik (Nov 12, 2014)

I drill 90% of my pens blanks on a drill press.  Wood, acrylic, they all come out fine.  The trick is to make sure your drill chuck and table are perfectly perpendiular and square, your bit is sharp, blank is secured in a vise, and the correct speed is chosen.  I am using a Delta floor model that is 20+ years old.  Most drill presses will have adequate run out specs.  Where I have had issues is with cheap drill bits not running true.  I still start with the cheap sets, and most of the bits are okay.  But you will find that occasional one that isn't.   The bits I use the most eventually get replaced with quality bits.


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## designer (Nov 12, 2014)

I have always used my horizontal drill press and only had a problem one time.  Turned out the "new" bit that I bought was not sharpened on center.  After resharpening the drill bit, it was fine.

I only drill pen blanks and small items though......and hopefully on center.


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## wouldentu2? (Nov 12, 2014)

Every comment here is true, it is your choice . enough money and room get a drill press, no room or money do it on the lathe.


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## Ted iin Michigan (Nov 12, 2014)

I've done both. Learned on the DP, tried the lathe when I had issues. Now I am back to the DP. I agree it can be whatever you find works best for you. 

That said, I read recently that Jet has introduced a new DP notable only that it has a full 5" of quill travel. Which is the thing that limits the drill methods mentioned. The one thing I hate is to get to full quill travel on my DP (or my lathe tailstock for that matter)and have to reset to get that extra travel. Sometimes it's just a short reset but on a long clicker pen it's quite a bit more travel required. This new DP would eliminate that nuisance.


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## Lenny (Nov 12, 2014)

Mack C. said:


> Lenny said:
> 
> 
> > Strictly for drilling pen blanks a lathe with a collet chuck is hard to beat.
> ...



But Mack, that's the fun part! With a sharp skew and highest speed on the lathe, turning a wood blank to round literally just takes a minute. Turning your blanks round ahead of time gives you a better idea of what the finished blank will look like, too. 
Of course cast resin blanks are ready to go right out of the mold (3/4 pvc pipe)


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## Quality Pen (Nov 13, 2014)

I was recommended to drill on a lathe when I started out. Great, great advice. Cut down on blowouts incredibly well and if you have a square blank then you'll get a centered hole. 

Great great move...


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## PenPal (Nov 13, 2014)

A couple of observations I have a Taiwanese drill press with sufficient travel, it also has a threaded rod through the quill to lock the chuck in place. The first thing I did was replace their bearings still cheap as to do and spent half a day establishing the moveable table was at right angle to the drill shaft. Fitted an X Y axis vice to the table spent time with that tightening the gibs and removing the slack and because I cut so many of my blanks to get the best grain they rarely are square so dead easy to line up in the vice, having replaced the 4 inch jaws with jaws that have a through horizontal vee and three vertical vees hold anything any way you like. I use the horizontal vee to ream the glued blanks.

I used to drill up to 100 or 200 at a time fastest easiest way IMHO to do this. I use DeWalt drill point drills get hundreds of drillings from them makes the cost per blank so very tiny and throw them away when they are tired.

Never put a backing sheet under a blank blow outs are rare indeed.

I also replaced the original chuck with a better one from the get go and got rid of the factory motor and fitted a one hp in its place. The whole set up dedicated to pen blanks owes me next to nothing over the last twenty years.

Electric motors are designed with a maximum no of on off switching over a period of time so I turn the drill press on and go for it. Works for me.

With my lathes using collets etc they stay set up for turning infinite drilling I do on my Hercus 1965 metal lathe where an accurate machine does the job best they are made for this most wood lathes are a compromise IMHO.

Now all this works for me the things I have stated to promote thought when choosing a drill press etc.

Kind regards Peter.


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## sbell111 (Nov 13, 2014)

Ted iin Michigan said:


> That said, I read recently that Jet has introduced a new DP notable only that it has a full 5" of quill travel. Which is the thing that limits the drill methods mentioned. The one thing I hate is to get to full quill travel on my DP (or my lathe tailstock for that matter)and have to reset to get that extra travel. Sometimes it's just a short reset but on a long clicker pen it's quite a bit more travel required. This new DP would eliminate that nuisance.


Delta's 18-900L has a six inch quill travel.


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## sbell111 (Nov 13, 2014)

Quality Pen said:


> I was recommended to drill on a lathe when I started out. Great, great advice. Cut down on blowouts incredibly well and if you have a square blank then you'll get a centered hole.
> 
> Great great move...



How does drilling on the lathe reduce blow outs?


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## kovalcik (Nov 14, 2014)

sbell111 said:


> How does drilling on the lathe reduce blow outs?


 

IMO,  lathe drilling reduces blowouts because the blank is held securely and the feed rate is limited by the how fast you can spin the tail stock hand wheel.

You can achieve the same results on a drill press with a good vise and controlling the feed, but it is built into the lathe drillng method.


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## Lenny (Nov 14, 2014)

The best method I have found for eliminating blow outs when drilling, on the lathe or drill press, is to leave your blank long, drill just beyond the length of the tube and then cut the blank back to the hole. When using a collet Chuck this method eliminates getting debris in the Chuck which, if not cleaned out, can really mess up the next one. DAMHIKT


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## Edgar (Nov 14, 2014)

Lenny said:


> The best method I have found for eliminating blow outs when drilling, on the lathe or drill press, is to leave your blank long, drill just beyond the length of the tube and then cut the blank back to the hole. When using a collet Chuck this method eliminates getting debris in the Chuck which, if not cleaned out, can really mess up the next one. DAMHIKT



That's the way I do it too. Mark the center of the blank, clamp the whole thing in a pen vise, drill to tube depth plus a skosh, then cut the blank on my bandsaw. If it's a 2-tube kit, clamp the remaining blank in the same orientation & repeat. If the tubes aren't the same size, I drill for the smaller one first then the larger one.


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## ClutchCargo (Dec 14, 2014)

I use both a floor-standing drill press and pen jaws on my scroll chuck. The jury is still out on which I find to be the most accurate. I find that the drill press method is better for handling user-cut blanks that start out not being perfectly square (i.e. not a perfect 3/4" x 3/4"), but clamping to the drill press table is more challenging, even with pen vises because those bases are inevitably too small. So the actual drilling isn't the problem; but secure clamping is. The pen jaw method on the lathe is great for perfectly squared up blanks, but the small amount of free play in wood lathe vs. metal lathe tail stocks combined with drill chucks seems to be amplified at the very tip of the drill bit, especially on long, large diameter bits. I usually try to drill smaller diameter starter holes, changing bits and working my way up to the larger diameters (e.g. 12.5 mm). This puts less stress on both the pen blank and the drill bit and allows for easier clearing of material and less clogging (and heat). But like I said, the jury is still out for me, and I have yet to find the ideal method that allows for absolutely perfect, same-diameter holes from one end of the blank to the other.

I'd be very interested to find out from others how they manage to keep a tail stock mounted drill chuck running perfectly true with no runout for the entire length of the pen blank when there are so many variables to control that seem to make it nearly impossible (i.e. chuck speed, type and length of drill bit, free play in tail stock morse taper tightening mechanism, hardness of pen blank material, etc.).


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## Big (Dec 14, 2014)

I ran out and got a drill press and have found out that I use my lathe almost exclusively now. Lathe works amazingly well for drilling blanks.


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## KenV (Dec 14, 2014)

Jeff--  I hope the divergent points of view have come through.   Both drill press and lathe drilling can work.   

Value of you choice depends on what else you are going to do in large measure.  Doing only a few pens -- a drill press will not give a lot of use for the cost.  

Headed to making production of pens a passion, the drill press, and especially a larger, well made drill press with a long quill travel starts looking like a better and better value.

Doing lots of other tasks and wood/metal work that involves drilling and perhaps some drum sanding -- drill press is looking better and better.

Starting out with minimal investment -- Lathe drilling has a lot going for it.  It is slower in operations, but that may be acceptable.

Suggest as others have -- avoid the cheap short quill travel bench top drill presses.  They are a discouraging frustration looking for a chance to live in your shop.


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## Paul in OKC (Dec 14, 2014)

I hae always drilled with a drill press. I have a cheap floor model with 3" of travel. Squared up with a good vise or clamp will do you well.


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## oneleggimp (Dec 14, 2014)

I have very limited space because I am a wheelchair user and can't get down to the basement.  Therefore I don't have room for anything but a lathe so I use the PSI dedicated pen drilling chuck on the headstock and a jacobs chuck in the tailstock to hold the drill bit.  Works well for me.


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## GaryMGg (Dec 15, 2014)

Like all tools, it depends. :biggrin:

I've got one like this except it's got some surface rust and lots of sawdust on it:






4" quill travel. I can drill down the middle of a 3/8" square blank if I don't rush the setup.

If you can drill successfully on the lathe, that's great. If you can drill successfully on the DP, that's great.


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