My Craftsman drill press is over 50 years old. I inherited it from my Dad, and he had always said it was the first tool he had bought after he and my Mom had gotten married. My Dad used to use it as part of his golf club repair business, back when “woods” were actually made out of persimmon wood. Plus we’ve both used it for may other projects along the years. So it has definitely definitely seen it’s fair share of usage over the years, and has stood up against the test of time. He had put a custom table on it many years ago, and that top worked well – but it was time for an upgrade.

My shop has less dedicated working space, and a whole lot less storage than his had. So I decided my new drill press table top needed a few drawers for storing the bits and accessories which I commonly use. Plus, I wanted to incorporate some t-tracks for hold downs as well as extending wings for when I am working on longer pieces. Lastly, I wanted to incorporate a dust port underneath and a sacrificial puck so I can easily swap out with another MDF puck when the original one gets overused. My Dad had used a round puck in his original drill press table top, and I had found drilling one of these out with a hole saw was a lot quicker than pulling out the table saw and cutting a square replacement.

I started with the DIY drill press table plans I posted a week or so ago. However, like I always seem to wind up doing, I made some spur of the moment design changes along the way. The first design change I made was to use rabbet joints for the outer walls, while using dados for the inner walls. This was to give it more stability than glue and screws. Another minor design change I made was in the layout of the t-tracks. Since I was using a kit of four POWERTEC t-track intersections I decided to butt them up against each other going front to back. This was due to not wanting to cut and drill two small 1″ pieces of t-track to fit in between.

The last design change I made was that I decided to not affix the back 4″ x 4″ piece leading to the dust chute. I decided to leave it free floating with an added a POWERTEC 2 1/2″ angled dust port attached. This lets me completely remove it if I want to clean out the dust chute. The angled dust port just makes it easier to attach the hose given the tight space in back.

If you noticed, my drill press is sitting on a Bora Portamate mobile base, allowing me to roll it out into my driveway, or around the shop with ease. If you have a small workshop, I highly recommend these. I have my bandsaw on one as well.

I’d love to hear your feedback or thoughts on my drill press table and design. Leave me a comment below.

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