Well I just got tired of my Sear drill press. Too many limitatons with depth of drilling, small table not holding adjustments and ugly color. Well truth is the short quill travel was the worst problem. So off to my local woodworking machine retailers. Looked at Woodcrafters, Rockers, several industrial retail outlets and one woodworkers tool supply store. Long day with too many salesmen. Powermatic, grizzly, delta, steel city, fox, ripkon, jet and several others that I can not even remember their names. Lot of drill presses out there when you start looking.
General observations for all of them. Sales are slow. Not very many people looking to up grade right now. More deals than I can count going on. Got the feeling they all had standing orders to wheel and deal to keep inventory moving. No great surprise when you see how slow thing are in many areas. Not hard to get a hundred dollars or more off any machine.
Ended up buying a Delta 20-290 drill press. They came down in price and add a couple of small delta accessories to make the deal. Sold my old Sears drill press of $125.00. So after taxes my new drill press came home for less than $700.00. Looks like a full day ahead of me in putting this beast together. Shoulder surgery means that I either need to use a engine lift or wait until my son can help lift the heavy parts. Heck of a machine.
Came down to Powermatic or Delta. Delta won with lower speed on the low end and 6" vs 4" quill travel. I added a keyless chuck. Powermatic did have a laser light but I have worked without one for 50 years. When I found that it had to be reset every time I adjusted the table or bit, it seemed like a lot of time for very little gain. Run out on the Delta was half of what the Powermatic floor model had but that could have been just luck of the drawl. Well I off the the shop for a day of reading instructions.
General observations for all of them. Sales are slow. Not very many people looking to up grade right now. More deals than I can count going on. Got the feeling they all had standing orders to wheel and deal to keep inventory moving. No great surprise when you see how slow thing are in many areas. Not hard to get a hundred dollars or more off any machine.
Ended up buying a Delta 20-290 drill press. They came down in price and add a couple of small delta accessories to make the deal. Sold my old Sears drill press of $125.00. So after taxes my new drill press came home for less than $700.00. Looks like a full day ahead of me in putting this beast together. Shoulder surgery means that I either need to use a engine lift or wait until my son can help lift the heavy parts. Heck of a machine.
Came down to Powermatic or Delta. Delta won with lower speed on the low end and 6" vs 4" quill travel. I added a keyless chuck. Powermatic did have a laser light but I have worked without one for 50 years. When I found that it had to be reset every time I adjusted the table or bit, it seemed like a lot of time for very little gain. Run out on the Delta was half of what the Powermatic floor model had but that could have been just luck of the drawl. Well I off the the shop for a day of reading instructions.
