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I was not satisfied by my chinese drill press so some time ago I start looking for a better one... it takes some time to find it out a at an accettable price but in the end I found it: It's a totally different animal. incredibly better. if you are interested here is the link to the video: https://youtu.be/zdXPffsP8w0

Hello, Currently, I am making my knives using a 4x36" belt sander. Although it works for many applications, I want something more. I can't really make the convex or concave bevels I want by using it, so I've set out to try and fabricate my own 2x72" belt grinder. The first step I am taking in the fabrication process is making aluminum wheels for the belt to run on. I cast the aluminum into old green bean cans. After taking apart the cans and getting the aluminum block out, the next step is to machine the aluminum into a perfect cylinder, make sure the sides are flat and can hold the bearings, and then round off the sides to allow proper tracking. One problem, though. I don't have a lathe to do this on. I've seen YouTube videos showing how to turn your drill press into a makeshift lathe, so that's what I was planning to do. The thing that troubles me is this: What tool should I use to machine the aluminum on my makeshift lathe? Should I use a cold chisel, or is aluminum soft enough that a woodworking chisel could work?

So something so very basic that we all do time and again is somethign which many people still none the less have problems with... putting holes in things. Modern drill presses are not made with metalwork in mind, and tend to run far too fast, even on their slowest settings, for drilling through metal. I've struggled far too often with burning out drill bits, having them bend and give me oblong holes, etc... my solution... go back to an erra when drilling holes in metal was the primary reason to have a drill press. I just picked myself up this 20 inch Prentice Brothers camelback drill press, with auto-feed and sliding head. It's well over 100 years old... but it's more or less complete, and everything is tight and smooth moving. I'm going to have to fully disassemble clean, paint and reassemble it, and I will need to make a new bracket for the bottom cone pulley and get some belts, and a #3 morse taper chuck. This drill press should be able to punch one inch holes straight through steel plate without much issue =) Slow and steady is the way to drill metal, and with the various stops, hand crank advances of the head, and the like, I should now never have to worry about drilling a hole again once I'm done restoring this. Ok some pictures! Here is the feed crank with inner knob. From the side you can see the engagement of the rear gear and the auto feed drive gear The inner rod is threaded and has a stop which sits against the outer rod which can spin independently. The rear gear can spin freely (albeit stiffly right now because of old grease) Here's the top of the feed mechanism. The cup around the worm gear is cracked, as I mentioned above, so I'll have to repair that . The whole thing stands about 7 feet tall or there about. The handle for the drill on the left is pointing right at the camera so you cant really see it. One other part is missing, which is some linkage between this foot pedal at the bottom which would push / pull the drive belt from the idler pulley to the drive pulley, for use with old lineshafts. This is a part that, should I desire, I should be able to forge from a piece of barstock easy enough. I found one last missing part... a washer and bolt to go over the end of the table height crank. This is trivial to fix. All the original oiler cups for the top of the machine and for the bottom cone were still with the machine, they're sitting on the rest. The rest has a lot of drill dimples, but is fairly well intact with no through holes. Here's the #1 concern, the rear bracket for the cone is broken in multiple places. It had obviously broken once, been fixed improperly with patch plates drilled and tapped through it, and then broken again. The sidearm is also broken off which would have the pass through for the foot pedal bar to push / pull the belt from the idler pulley. Here's the nice dealer plate