Drill Press Cart
Not long after I removed my drill press from the right side of my miter saw station, I quickly got tired of having it sitting on the floor. I don’t use the drill press a lot, but when I did, it was inconvenient to say the least. Also, if I needed to move it anywhere other than a foot or so, I need to use my dolly (I’m not much for hurting my back to keep lifting that damn thing). It was about this time that I was looking into upgrading my old Craftsman drill press for a bit better model. I opted for the one offered by Rikon which has variable speeds. Now was the time to build a rolling drill press stand to get this tool off of the floor and mobile.
I, again, went searching for inspiration and I came across the drill press stand that Brad Rodriguez at Fix This Build That built for his shop. I liked its simplicity and overall look, so I went ahead and bought the plans as part of one of Brad’s plans bundles (a great deal in my opinion).
This was a pretty straight forward build. I modified the dimensions slightly to accommodate my needs and it went together quickly and without incident. I must say that, up to the point I finished this project, this was the best set of drawer faces I had done. I took my time with making sure things were square and the drawer faces were all perfectly even all the way around.
I wound up making one small modification to the bottom drawer. My Drill Doctor drill bit sharpener didn’t quite fit standing up in any of the drawers. All of the drawers were made to be the same height (not the best decision looking back now). I needed a deeper drawer, but I didn’t want to make another one. So, I took the two bottom drawers and combined them into one deeper drawer. I took the bottom off of the second drawer from the bottom and used some pocket screws to hold them together. There won’t be any stress on that joint so I’m not too concerned about its durability. The drawer faces were kept in their original positions to ensure an even gap with all of the rest of the drawers. It looks like there are still two drawers because I left all of the drawer pulls in place, but the two bottom pulls both open the same drawer.
As of August 2020, I’ve had this drill press cart in service for about a year. I may come back to this project again in the future as there are a couple of changes I would like to make, specifically when it comes to the drawers and the overall storage setup. For one thing, I was using the drawer slides I had on hand at the time of the build and they are not long enough to allow full extension of the drawers. At any rate, it does a fine job at holding the drill bits and various other drilling accessories in one place for me to find when I need them and keeping the drill press at a more comfortable height for usage.
***RETIRED: June 2021***
I have retired this drill press cart and fully disassembled it. Because I used some less-than-desirable plywood for this project, little if any was salvaged and reused. The drill press itself has found a new home on my Rockler Miter Saw Station.
It’s funny how the placement of the drill press has come full circle with it back on the miter saw station. With the newly designed miter saw station, I was able to put the drill press in place and not have it in the way like it was before. With the addition of my new shop lighting I don’t have the same issues with trying to see my marks like I had previously on the old miter saw station.
The drill press cart served me well for the short time it was in service, but it was rarely moved around the shop and was unwieldy when being moved on the tile floor. I’m hoping I do not make any further changes to the workshop layout, as I rather like the current placement of the drill press.
