Buying a new drill press

Hi,

I'm Jim Bradley---you know, Glenn's dad. I absolutely love my Delta 959 L. The table is wonderful. I have a Rockler fancy table that I put on. I took it off because I kept removing it because the original Delta table was easier and handier to use.

Glenn and I checked the machine for accuracy (Glenn is H___ on accuracy) and we checked for run-out problems. Everything was perfect.

As Glenn said---this machine is much heavier (larger column, etc.) than his. I almost purchased the same one Glenn has. I am extremely glad that I spent the extra money for the 959 L. Sorry, but I have to say it again, "I love that machine."

The belts are very easy to move to change speeds. It has more power than I can handle. I put a 3 1/2" Grizzly forstner bit in it and put a couple Rockler hold down clamps on the piece of wood. I touched the wood with the tip of the forstner bit and it jerked the wood up out of those clamps in an instant. The clamps could not take it.

I finally got that job done by drilling a hole in a piece of wood so the forstner bit could not bite in and went ahead and drilled. Of course by now I had 4 clamps on the wood instead of the original two. Anyway, back to the drill press...the torque that destroyed two hold-downs did not slow the DP one iota.

Lessons learned: 1) I really fasten wood down when using the Grizzly forstner bits. 2) I really like the DP.

Gad! I sound like I own Delta stock. I don't. The extra sacrafice of spending hard earned dollars over Glenn's machine was well worth it.

This is the end of the unsolicited commercial.

Enjoy,

Jim

After having the steel city for about 4 months now I am very happy with it, the 6" quill stroke is nice to have, I use it more than I thought. The lack of delta style table isn't a big deal, I made my own out of a cast iron saw table top and its pretty nice and I can swap it out with the factory table to do messy metal drilling with oil and not have a mess on the table that I use for drilling wood. I saw the Delta 17-959 at a customer of mines house and I was impressed with it. I think if I had to do it all over again I would still go with the steel city, its a nice machine and the quill lock comes in handy at times and I don't think the Delta had that.
 
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