Drilling pen blanks with bench top drill press.

Tom Baugues

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Lafayette, Indiana
I have a cheap bench top drill press that I've had for many years. The "stroke" on it isn't very long. I can only drill about 2 inches with it. If my pen blank is longer than that ( which is very often as you know) I then have to stop drilling and lift the table up and insert the drill bit into the blank then "hang on" as I restart the drill press and finish the blank depth. Does anyone have a better way (besides buying a new floor drill press). Does anyone drill their blanks with the lathe? If so...how do you hold the blank? I have a drill chuck for my lathe but never knew how to move the wood into the bit.

Tom
 
Tom, I used to have the same problem drilling pen blanks with a benchtop drill press. I would hold the blank in a drill press vise, drill partway down, then instead of raising the table on the drill press, I'd raise the vise by putting a block of scrap wood underneath it. It was a lot faster than raising the table.

For drilling in the lathe, I think the most common way is to mount the drill chuck and bit in the tailstock, then put the blank in a 4-jaw chuck on the headstock. Instead of the drill bit turning, the wood turns. Then you advance the drill bit by turning the tailstock screw.
 
Vaughn is right on with a solution. We have two old drill presses that don't work or are very wobbly. I am not currently a restorer of old iron but put them in a corner for time being. Solution was a cheap bench top I bought at a yard sale. Since then have added a JET that I bought on sale at Menard's this past winter. I do not know how many hundred pens have been drilled and barrel trimmed on these two machines throughout this school year. By the way, one of the old floor drill press quills doesn't stay in, it happened to be a Morse Taper 2 so I use it in the lathe to hold small items like chain pulls, eggs, etc.
 
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