Drill press handles too long?

[Matt Day]

I've got a Powermatic 1150 drill press to which I've added an auxiliary table to. The problem is the handles contact my 2" high fence so I have to lower the table more than I'd like.

With the chuck all the way up the bottom of chuck is 6" above the table, which is about the highest I can put the table without the handles hitting the fence. Put a 3/16" bit in the chuck and there's about 4" clear to the table, so I'm eating up about half my 6" quill travel just getting to the material. I liked being able to put the table just about all the way to the bit on my old Craftsman DP.

I'm thinking about buying some 1/2" aluminum rod and cutting some threads to make shorter arms, and keeping the stock ones for resale purposes. Maybe about 5" instead of the stock 8" ones. What does the group say?

[glenn bradley]

I have 3 fences for my DP table. One of them is only 1/2" high for small scale stuff.

DP WP Table 001.jpg

[Tom Ewell]

Also have a tall fence used just occasionally, I can get my chuck closer than you with it however. When a handle gets in the way I just remove one and use the others.
Most times I use similar setup as Glenn, rarely do I need the tall fence.
Make the short handles if you like but you might want to rethink or make another fence as well.

[Dick Strauss]

Or cut a notch in the fence

[Doug Garson]

Sounds like a good idea. I've removed one of the arms on a few occasions to clear my fence or a clamp. I wonder how a wheel with knob like used on a table saw to raise and lower the blade would work. Might not give adequate force for some drilling operations but you could fabricate it with threaded holes to add arms when needed.

[Peter Aeschliman]

Lots of drill press tables use very short fences for this exact reason. Like this one:

http://www.woodpeck.com/wpdrillpresstable.html

The only thing I use a fence for on the DP is for repeatability. I imagine you only really need a tall DP table fence if you are drilling in the edges of thin workpieces, so that the fence can help with stability of the workpiece. But in that case, you will probably have the table lowered enough to clear the fence anyway.

You will give up some leverage if you make your handles shorter, which would probably only be an issue for big holes with forstner bits.

But I'd recommend trying a short fence before you do bother messing with making new handles.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

I have that Woodpeckers fence on my drill press and it works well.

[Bruce Page]

Go with steel if you make new handles. You will be surprised how easily 1/2" aluminum will bend.

[Sal Kurban]

Do you know the thread size/pitch on the handles?
Thanks,
Sal.

[Frederick Skelly]

Go with steel if you make new handles. You will be surprised how easily 1/2" aluminum will bend.

Agree.

Also remember that you'll have less leverage with shorter handles. Not a showstopper by any means, but you might notice it's harder to drill a given hole, if you use that DP to drill steel occasionally. (But if so, you just put the stock handles back on, right?)

Fred

[Jason Beam]

Personally, this seems like symptom treatment rather than curing the root cause - that fence is taller than it needs to be.

I'd shorten the fence ... i use a 1/2 tall straight edge guide clamp thingy ... like some people use for circular saw guides ... i found a 2' long one that works perfect.

Maybe you can redesign your fence to lay flat and make up some saddle-style stop blocks instead?

[Peter Aeschliman]

Another vote for making a new fence! The leverage you get from the longer handles is nice (although unnecessary). You'll find that you don't need a fence any taller than 1/2" the majority of the time. The fence on a drill press mostly just acts as an index, not something used to hold the workpiece square to the table.

Keep your tall fence for that rare occasion though.

[John Lanciani]

Just one of the reasons that the foot feed was on my list of requirements when I tracked down my 17" Delta. I believe Powermatic made a foot feed for the 1150 but tracking down all the parts is apt to be a lesson in patience. Removing one of the handles as needed is probably the easiest, shortening all three of them would be very low on my list of options due to the loss of leverage.

[pat warner]

Tho far from the issue, I would not sacrifice fence height.
Drilling the edge of stock requires some support.
And for the long handle: Another hub with a sliding handle.

[Chris Padilla]

All-thread might suffice for a new handle. Heck, a long enough bolt might work, too....