Drill press without a quill lock

[newuser1]

I bought this drill press a few months ago and only now I realized that it doesn't have a quill lock.

https://www.ryobitools.ca/products/details/10-drill-press

The reason I need the lock now is to be able to use the StewMac Safe-T planer with it. I can always use the depth stop but this means one of my hands will be holding the handle down, while I have to move the material I'm planing with a single hand which is inconvenient. Any ideas on how to get around this problem?

 

[Freeman Keller]

The depth stop on my Ryobi drill press does lock the quill both in the starting position and end of travel but its kind of a hassle to use for repetitive passes with the Safe-t-planer. I often leave the quill all the way up and bring the table up so the work piece is just touching the planer - make a pass, then raise the table a quarter of a turn on the crank. Do a couple of passes side by side on a piece of scrap and you can measure the depth of the cut. I like to take very shallow passes with the Safe-t-planer, its seems happiest if it doesn't have to work too hard.

Edit - I just looked at the manual for yours and you have a different depth stop than mine. Mine is built into the handle that lowers the quill, yours seems to be along side and is some sort of linear thing. Your only option might be raising the table.

 

[guitarbuilder]

I have one of the original safety planers.....you are going to want to keep two hands on your work if you don't want to have screwed up cutter marks in your wood. In fact it's not the safest thing to use if you ask me, especially if the work isn't long. I'd consider getting a 14" drill press with more features and save for a planer.


I'd consider a surfacing router bit in a router planer jig too. That way your hands are on the router, not the work.

 

[Freeman Keller]

Here is a picture of my little Ryobi drill press - the depth stop is the knurled part of the crank.

 

[newuser1]

Edit - I just looked at the manual for yours and you have a different depth stop than mine. Mine is built into the handle that lowers the quill, yours seems to be along side and is some sort of linear thing. Your only option might be raising the table.

Raising the table will be very inefficient, so I'm trying to find a better solution.

I have one of the original safety planers.....you are going to want to keep two hands on your work if you don't want to have screwed up cutter marks in your wood. In fact it's not the safest thing to use if you ask me, especially if the work isn't long. I'd consider getting a 14" drill press with more features and save for a planer.


I'd consider a surfacing router bit in a router planer jig too. That way your hands are on the router, not the work.
View attachment 811552

I built one of these router planer jigs from plywood and wasn't really happy with it - I never felt safe using it, and the results were subpar. I also have 12" Rigid planer, but I work outside and it's a pain to take it out from the shed for something simple. With the Rigid planer you have to deal with snipe, which is a problem unless you are squaring/thicknessing a blank that you haven't worked on yet. Also how do you plane just the headstock of a guitar to thickness with a standard planer, you simply can't. There are many situations when the Safe-T type planer is a better option.

 

[pavel]

My drill press has a similar linear depth stop but with a pair of stops for both a min and max limit. But you should be able to just tighten the single limit all the way and raise the table as Freeman suggests?

The safe-t planet isn’t the most precise tool by any means, but I find it handy for things like thicknessing Tele/Strat headstocks.

 

[guitarbuilder]

Raising the table will be very inefficient, so I'm trying to find a better solution.



I built one of these router planer jigs from plywood and wasn't really happy with it - I never felt safe using it, and the results were subpar. I also have 12" Rigid planer, but I work outside and it's a pain to take it out from the shed for something simple. With the Rigid planer you have to deal with snipe, which is a problem unless you are squaring/thicknessing a blank that you haven't worked on yet. Also how do you plane just the headstock of a guitar to thickness with a standard planer, you simply can't. There are many situations when the Safe-T type planer is a better option.

It sounds like you need to rebuild a router planer jig out of different materials or a different design. Headstock thicknessing can be accomplished with a hand plane, Occ. spindle sanding against a fence, band saw and fence, hand saw and abrasive, router planer jig, or even a router propped up on a couple rails with a longer base.

Safety planers were invented a long time after guitars were being made. I'd be concerned with the drill press table flexing under load. Those cheap ones aren't cast iron.


If you are planing on thicknessing a tilt back peghead on a safety planer, you may want to stick the surface to a longer and heavier board as trying to do it by hand may result in a less than satisfactory result due to tipping.

 

[newuser1]

It sounds like you need to rebuild a router planer jig out of different materials or a different design. Headstock thicknessing can be accomplished with a hand plane, Occ. spindle sanding against a fence, band saw and fence, hand saw and abrasive, router planer jig, or even a router propped up on a couple rails with a longer base.

Safety planers were invented a long time after guitars were being made. I'd be concerned with the drill press table flexing under load. Those cheap ones aren't cast iron.


If you are planing on thicknessing a tilt back peghead on a safety planer, you may want to stick the surface to a longer and heavier board as trying to do it by hand may result in a less than satisfactory result due to tipping.

Thanks Marty,

I don't want to rebuild a planer jig for several reasons, not the least like of space to store it. The drill press I have have a cast iron table and flexing is not a concern - this is from Ryobi's website:

Tilting cast iron table tilts tool-free from 0–45°

I don't have a quality hand plane, and the ones worth buying from what I read are worth $300+, so I'm not going there. On top of that you have to sharpen them and set them up properly, something I'm not skilled enough to do.

I'm working on 2 Bass VI necks now, and for one of them which is made out of cherry I forgot to take down the blank to 3/4 thickness, and now I need to plane 1/8" off the back of the already routed neck with existing truss rod channel. I don't want to put it through my regular planer because of snipe that will show on the worst places - the heel and the back of the headstock. So this Safe-T planer seems like viable option for doing this. Any advice on how to do that without it?

 

[E-miel]

Maybe you could make an upside down U-shape router base. Clamp the neck to a flat bench and then route.

 

[newuser1]

Maybe you could make an upside down U-shape router base. Clamp the neck to a flat bench and then route.

You mean just use my router table?

 

[guitarbuilder]

You could do it on a jointer or router table. On the router table, assuming it is a decent one, you can set up your fence so that it leaves an untouched area ( looks like sled skies) on each side of the neck. Then trim the unrouted section off using a small plane or whatever pleases you until they are level with the routed portion.

If you use the safety planer, I'd put a long bed on the drill press table to support the neck from front to back.

 

[E-miel]

You mean just use my router table?

No. I made a quick sketch to illustrate what I mean. Green moves, red is stationary:

I have used this setup to thin a headstock. If you lift the neck at the nut end of of the workbench you can also use it to taper the back of the neck.

 

[old wrench]

I think your drill press was designed by an "engineer" who never used a drill press.

Since you are determined to use it and the "safety planer" (an oxymoron, IIRC), and you require a quill lock, use your owners manual to figure out how to remove the quill, and then drill and tap a hole in left hand side of the quill housing so you can screw in a 5/16 bolt with a handle on it.

Quill lock added .

.

 

[Freeman Keller]

Honestly, using a Safe-t-planer as I showed in my picture works very well for thicknessing things like necks and head plates. I have absolutely no problem adjusting the table up and down as required, I take very thin passes with the planer each time, I put the piece of MDF on the table as shown, I level the table and square the quill before I start. As with any mechanical wood cutting device it has its risks - I respect those and feel that it is safe when used with care.

I used to do the neck thicknessing by hand with a plane, this works much better and leaves me with a flat straight back line - I can't imagine how I would rig up a router to do the same thing

 

[old wrench]

No. I made a quick sketch to illustrate what I mean. Green moves, red is stationary:
View attachment 811799

I have used this setup to thin a headstock. If you lift the neck at the nut end of of the workbench you can also use it to taper the back of the neck.

I do something very similar for thinning and angling head stocks with my router setup.

A quick process and very clean results .


edit: I've learned that it's important to plan out the sequence of machining steps (or hand-work) on a neck to take advantage of square or flat surfaces; make them work to your advantage before you turn them into a hard to clamp rounded shape .

.

 

[newuser1]

I tried the Safe-T planer for thicknessing a headstock of a scrap neck I had laying around and it worked OK. I taped a wide MDF piece on top of the cast iron table and taped a simple fence made out of 1/2" cherry with a semicircular hole to allow for the Safe-T planer to go lower than the fence. I was about to follow Freeman's advice and do shallow passes lowering the table a bit after each pass, however I realized at this point that the MDF makeshift table is in the way of the table adjustment handle . I adjusted the drill stop for a shallow pass and started thiknessing the headstock with one hand holding the feed handle down, and the other planing the neck. As I said that worked ok, not great, but good enough.

Then I tried thiknessing the entire scrap neck with one hand and that was a disaster of course. At the end I took my Rigid planer out of the shed and planed the real neck down by about 1/8". I had snipe on both ends, but I levelled it with a orbital sander with 80 grid sandpaper. Of course I now worry that the heel of my neck won't be perfectly square after the sanding and might tilt once seated into the neck pocket .

Here are my Bass VI necks in progress. I was able to just drill the tuner holes today, as I work outside and it feels like -12C.

 

[guitarbuilder]

Do you ever put in a long scrap piece of wood in front and back of the piece you are planing? Sometimes that helps as the scrap takes the snipe, leaving the part in the middle pretty straight.

 

[newuser1]

Do you ever put in a long scrap piece of wood in front and back of the piece you are planing? Sometimes that helps as the scrap takes the snipe, leaving the part in the middle pretty straight.

Shouldn't those scrap pieces be exactly the same thickness as the piece I'm planing? I guess I can start with scrap that is a bit thicker than the main piece and just plane it down to the same size...

 

[guitarbuilder]

Shouldn't those scrap pieces be exactly the same thickness as the piece I'm planing? I guess I can start with scrap that is a bit thicker than the main piece and just plane it down to the same size...

Yes. I normally stagger them so both front and rear are under the knives at the same time.

 

[telemnemonics]

Get a couple of strong bungee cords and bungee the handle at the bottom of the throw.