New Toy
This post was written over the course of several days ...
Took a drive over to Harbor Freight - purveyor of fine Chinese tools & hardware - and picked up this little drill press. With a coupon, it cost me just over fifty bucks. This is not what I would call a good drill press, in fact it is pretty crappy. The base and the table are stamped, not forged, and small. The quill travel is a measly two inches, parts that should be steel are aluminum, parts that should be aluminum are plastic, vibration is excessive, and the 3/8" chuck has a disconcerting wobble to it. I knew all that when I bought it, and I never would have if I did not already have a much better one, or at least a decent one. What I wanted from this drill press is small size and light weight, so I can add it to my inside workstation, and not have to leave the heat/ac to go drill a hole in the garage. This press weighs well under 40 pounds, and doesn't take up too much space on my inside workbench. My 'good' drill press is not something you'd want to move around a lot.
At this size and price point, I was not expecting great quality, but rather hopefully something that I could build on to be useful. The first thing I did was disassemble the table pivot and grind the flange so the table sits square in pitch vs the column. Then I aligned it in roll against the column with a square, and locked it in tight. I never use the angle adjustment of the table, if I want to drill something on an angle, I clamp it or shim it or something. I built the little table extension in the picture from scrap wood. It slides on and off from the front, and wedges in place tight without fasteners. Then, I built the sort-of fence dealy from more scrap and some pipe clamps. The fence mounts to the column and pivots around it, so you can move it in as close to the bit as you like. It gives you a guide to vertical for edge drilling, and swings out of the way or removes when you don't need it. This drill press is so small, a conventional fence would hardly fit. Finally, I built a non-marring base extension, which cures all the tipping tendencies of such a small lightweight tool, and ran out an old can of red paint on it. Total out-of-pocket for upgrades, maybe four dollars.
Some testing, and it's not half bad. With care it can drive my largest Forstner bit, and the wobble settles down once you start drilling - holes are clean and accurate, at least in wood. Plastic and aluminum should be ok, but I'd use the bigger press to drill steel. The other thing I want this for is my StewMac fret press, which is mounted in the picture. You can make out the can I used as a support for the table when testing this, and it seems like it should work. It should also be useful for light-duty sanding and grinding. This is the first time I've ever bought a power tool from Harbor Freight, so I am curious to see how it will work out. For making necks, pickguards, and other small parts, this might be just the thing. It will certainly drill a straighter and more precise hole than I could by hand.
So what's my point? A tool like this can open up a huge range of capabilities for the DIYer. It doesn't cost a lot, or take up a lot of space, you can use it on your kitchen table and keep it in the closet. Good workmanship comes much more from the operator than the tool. A craftsman with a cheap tool will get better results than a hack with an expensive tool. * Set it up right ( better than it left the factory, ) take your time and do a lot of test pieces before you try the real thing, and you'd be surprised what you can do.
* My ex-brother-in-law was living proof of that - thousands of dollars worth of the finest tools his wife could afford, and f'ed up every job he ever touched.
Here's a better shot of the table, fence, and base. You can see how the pipe clamps hold the fence to the column. For very little added cost, these simple additions vastly improve the base tool. I like the light, especially now that I've installed a much brighter fluorescent bulb and extended the shade with a piece of manila folder. The can is the perfect size for pressing operations, the support is not needed for drilling or sanding. Also, notice the lanyard for the chuck key - no more "Where did I put that $%#@%^$ thing?"
You really don't need an entire workshop of power tools to build a guitar. The baby router I mentioned earlier, a hand drill, a small sander, a jigsaw and belt sander, and a drill press like this, pretty much covers it. Here in this thread, I've outlined a lot of useful jigs you can make yourself. You can also get a lot of things pre-made, like fretboards already slotted, etc etc. I knew someone in high school who built a decent Telecaster with not much more than a coping saw and a lot of determination.
While fitting out the new setup, I picked up this set of brad-point drill bits, which Home Depot sells for just ten bucks. You can't beat that. Brad points are only for wood and plastic, I wouldn't even use them on aluminum, but they are much better than regular drill bits. You put the tip on your mark, and the bit follows, much like a Forstner. Better yet, punch a dimple in the workpiece and drop the point into it. Also, a two-dollar countersink from Harbor Freight, that, after a little sharpening, works better than my other more expensive ones.
Putting it all together, drilling tuner holes for my Audiovox project. The angled headstock is already thicknessed and smoothed enough to lie flat on the stack of scrap blocks that make clearance for the neck. The pillow partially supports the other end, so you don't have to hold the whole weight with your left hand. It is working very well so far. Remember, these holes will be reamed-out for bushings later, so they don't have to be super-precise now, but it always pays to be as neat and clean as you can. You can see the steel bar glued into the neck for a truss rod, and the geometry of the angle joint.
Here's the hat trick: drilling side tuners for the 12. The holes need to be centered and perpendicular to the edge. My little fence contraption is not as accurate as a proper fence, but it is strong enough to use as a guide. Each hole is set up individually with shims and clamps, checking for square in all dimensions. The tape on the drill bit marks the depth of the hole.
And the final result: 108 tuner holes drilled, from 1/16" to 9/16", no mistakes, no excitement, and all done
air-conditioned. For a crappy little drill press, it worked just fine, and its work is far from finished. Its next test will be some fretwork. If you are building a workshop, a good drill press should be your first investment.
Having gotten that done, it's time to glue up some necks. First I radius-sanded the fretboards to 12 inches with my DIY sanding block. The StewMac board started with a 16" radius, which was easy to do. The other board started flat, and was a lot of work to do entirely by sanding, not to mention a mess of nasty rosewood dust. For a flat board, better to rough it out with a router, and then finish by sanding. I'm not much of a cook, but the little kitchen timer has a thousand uses.
The same little jig that I glued up the angled headstocks on is perfect for gluing fretboards. I used matching 12" radius cauls that I made the same way as the sanding block, and lots of clamps, on both sides. Clamping the center is not good enough - you want to clamp the edges, and you can't use too many clamps. Finally, after the glue is set up, I radius-sanded the fretboards again, this time to get them perfectly straight. Sighting with a ruler against the light will show you the low and high spots. Scribble over the surface with a pencil, then erase the pencil marks with the sander. Eventually, you'll get it near to perfect, and the rest can be fixed with a little fret dressing.
I want to glue the fixed trussrod in tight, but not the adjustable one. A strip of cellophane tape over the truss rod slot will keep the glue out. At least, I think it will, I'd have to destroy the neck to find out for sure. Cellophane tape is about as thin as you can get, and although it may grab the rod at first, it is pretty weak stuff and will let go in time.
Some final fitting and I find that the guitar neck is 1/4" too long for the bridge mounting in the body. Don't know how the hell I did that, but too long is easily fixed. The bass neck is spot-on, so I'm not a complete idiot.
Back to testing the drill press, I made some test pits in hard maple with a 1/4" Forstner bit, for marker dots. I pre-punched dimples in the wood, and let the bit find its own center. The result is perfect, as good as my big drill press. I got a big bag of 1/4" pearl marker dots from an eBay seller in Taiwan for the price of a dozen of them from StewMac. The Taiwan dots are actually thicker and better than StewMac's.
A final test is drilling for side marker dots, which is always a fussy business. I scribed a line on the edge of a piece of scrap, and reinstalled my fence. In this case, being exactly square is not important. I chucked a 1/16" drill bit so just 1/4" protruded, adjusted the fence to hit the line, and had at it. Again, excellent results, and the same with a 3/32" bit.
I am more and more pleased with this thing, it is turning out to be a great guitar-building workstation. I had good reason to be leery of it, but it exceeds all expectations. The gooseneck light is much more useful than the idiotic 'lasers' on my other press, which are just a good way of quickly drilling off-center, and are kind of blinding when they're on, so you can't even see what you're doing. I'm sure the guys in marketing thought it was a great idea, though.
I'm going to pick up some new drums for the old sanding kit that I've had lying around for years, and see how that works for small jobs. I also found a small grinding wheel at the bottom of the tool cabinet, a wire wheel, polishing wheel, and a few other things. I'm gathering all these parts in a tool box to keep handy by the new press. The little press and a box of accessories will eventually give about 90% of the capability of the big press in the workshop. Similarly, I have a cheap little B&D drill in addition to my massive DeWalt concrete smasher. For light jobs the little drill does just fine, especially overhead, when the DeWalt gets pretty heavy pretty fast.
I also ordered an inexpensive 1/4" Forstner bit to add to the kit, so I don't have to continually strip the one out of my main set - that's a good way to lose it. That is a part that will see plenty of use - lots of guitar tuners and marker dots - so it is worth five bucks to have a spare. In a pinch, the 1/4" brad point will do the job, but the Forstner gives a nicer flat-bottomed hole. The larger Forstner bits see much less use and cost more, so one of each will do.
