A drill press as a mill?
- Thread starter chuck nelson
- Start date
New Camper
CGN frequent flyer
- Location
- Lurking in the woods near SFRC.
I've used my drill press for inletting two different stock blanks. Bits I've used range from drill bits, speed bores (for rough and fast bulk wood removal) and extensive use of rotary rasps and rotary files. While I used the router for some parts like the barrel groove and recoil lug groove, everything else was done with the drill press.
Lateral forces on a drill press will usually dislocate the chuck since there is no rod holding it tight into the quill. For in letting I used forstner bits to rough, removing most of the waste the chisels and scrapers, sometimes a die grinder carefully to open barrel channels. There is no quick way.
fingers284
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- Alberta Cowboy Ranges
...
As others have eluded to;the big weakness is the quality of the vice and cross feed assembly. Most of those made for drill presses and far too loose and sloppy for anything but crude stock removal. Presumably that slop could re considerably reduced with knowledge and modification
cheers mooncoon
cheers mooncoon
You have a few options really...
1) Use a drill press as a mill and risk damage to the work.
2) Use the drill press as a drill press and use fostner bits to drill relief cuts, then use a chisel and some patience to finish the inletting.
3) Purchase a hobby mill and some milling bits. Entry costs for a basic setup will run between $1,000 to $1,500, but will really open up the options for you to do a variety of small gunsmithing jobs, and is close to the size of a bench top drill press
If you only plan to do one or two stocks, just use option #2, but if you want to play with milling, it may be worth your time to invest in a small hobby mill.
1) Use a drill press as a mill and risk damage to the work.
2) Use the drill press as a drill press and use fostner bits to drill relief cuts, then use a chisel and some patience to finish the inletting.
3) Purchase a hobby mill and some milling bits. Entry costs for a basic setup will run between $1,000 to $1,500, but will really open up the options for you to do a variety of small gunsmithing jobs, and is close to the size of a bench top drill press
If you only plan to do one or two stocks, just use option #2, but if you want to play with milling, it may be worth your time to invest in a small hobby mill.
What he said.
At first I was going to present the same doom and gloom stories as the rest. But I see you are saying you want to work with wood.
It's still mostly doom and gloom but if you want to make some parts up and if you have the right sort of drill press you can do some modifications that actually make a drill press fairly decent for WOOD milling.
I did all of the stuff noted below about 25 to 30 years ago. I used it a few times over a couple of years until I got a mill/drill then it was never used ever again. I did slot mortising in wood with fairly good success but even with a 3/8 size end mill I was limited to about a 1/4 inch depth of cut or it chattered so bad that it would lift the wood out of the vise. So the tales of doom and gloom are very accurate. However if you're careful there's no doubt you can do the things I note below and have a decent enough way to mill out a wood stock for a receiver. You might be best off using Forstner bits for the hogging and then set up for milling just for the details though.
I did some very small parts in aluminium using this same setup and it was woefully bad. I managed it but only by making paper thickness sort of cuts. It's totally inadequate for metal. But if you PROMISE that you're only interested in using it with wood then you can make it work with the setup described.
First off if using an X-Y vise you need to adjust the gib screws to make it so the dovetail ways have a slight drag you feel through the feed handles.
Next, you MUST HAVE a drill press where the quill has a morse taper spindle. You won't be using the Jabobs or keyless chuck. If you try using the chuck it'll walk the MT arbor out of the quill or it'll walk the chuck off the Jacobs taper on a fixed chuck cheap drill press. You can hammer the tapers all you want but the nature of the forces is such that the tapers WILL come loose. I know, I tried and they did come loose.
Now the tricky part that makes this work. Get yourself a 3/8 end mill holder that has a MT2 mounting tail. You will fill in the draw bar hole in the end with a section of screw that you fix in place with some form of adhesive or clean and soft solder. This plug is drilled to allow for a 10-32 screw to pass through it. You also need to get or make up a LONG allen key to allow you to insert the 10-32 screw through from inside the holder. And finally you need to make up a metal tab that fits into the drive out wedge slot in the quill such that it fits into the center shaft and receives the 10-32 screw. This filler plug needs to be long enough that it fits up far enough that you have roughly 3/32 inch or a hair less showing through the wedge slot in the quill. This lets you wedge it out after you're done. This tail piece is short,flat and tall as the slot so it still lets the center shaft turn. The tail piece also has a notch in the middle of it so it fits over the stub end of the filler screw but does not contact the screw. Instead it centers itself on the filler screw but rests the outer edges on the lower side of the slot.
TO secure the holder after all this is done you move the quill down and wedge out the drill chuck and arbor. Then insert the flat tail piece and the end mill holder. Using the long allen key insert the 10-32 screw up through the hole for the end mill and screw it into the tail piece. It need only be firmly snug, not tightened up hard But you now have a correctly locked in place end mill "chuck" in your drill press that won't let itself be walked out of the taper.
Notice I said to get a 3/8 inch holder. Even with all this any drill press that "only" has an MT2 quill is going to be too light and too flexible to use it even in wood with anything larger than a 3/8 end mill. So don't even THINK of using anything bigger such as rounded core box router bits or the like. The whole thing will just rock around like a big rubber band and ruin the wood.
Last of all you need some way to lock the quill in place. Even if you leave the quill up and use the table to control the cutting depth the shape of the end mills will pull the cutter downward. So you need some way to secure the quill vertically.
If you have the threaded rod depth limiter you can use that. Just take it apart and put one of the jam nuts on either side of the stop and tighten it so it locks the quill in place instead of only limiting the travel.
If you have the other style of depth stop you can't do it that way. Instead you need to totally remove the quill and drill through the side of the head casting and thread it for a couple of locking screws.
Use the highest speed it has for the drill with the end mills.
It's still mostly doom and gloom but if you want to make some parts up and if you have the right sort of drill press you can do some modifications that actually make a drill press fairly decent for WOOD milling.
I did all of the stuff noted below about 25 to 30 years ago. I used it a few times over a couple of years until I got a mill/drill then it was never used ever again. I did slot mortising in wood with fairly good success but even with a 3/8 size end mill I was limited to about a 1/4 inch depth of cut or it chattered so bad that it would lift the wood out of the vise. So the tales of doom and gloom are very accurate. However if you're careful there's no doubt you can do the things I note below and have a decent enough way to mill out a wood stock for a receiver. You might be best off using Forstner bits for the hogging and then set up for milling just for the details though.
I did some very small parts in aluminium using this same setup and it was woefully bad. I managed it but only by making paper thickness sort of cuts. It's totally inadequate for metal. But if you PROMISE that you're only interested in using it with wood then you can make it work with the setup described.
First off if using an X-Y vise you need to adjust the gib screws to make it so the dovetail ways have a slight drag you feel through the feed handles.
Next, you MUST HAVE a drill press where the quill has a morse taper spindle. You won't be using the Jabobs or keyless chuck. If you try using the chuck it'll walk the MT arbor out of the quill or it'll walk the chuck off the Jacobs taper on a fixed chuck cheap drill press. You can hammer the tapers all you want but the nature of the forces is such that the tapers WILL come loose. I know, I tried and they did come loose.
Now the tricky part that makes this work. Get yourself a 3/8 end mill holder that has a MT2 mounting tail. You will fill in the draw bar hole in the end with a section of screw that you fix in place with some form of adhesive or clean and soft solder. This plug is drilled to allow for a 10-32 screw to pass through it. You also need to get or make up a LONG allen key to allow you to insert the 10-32 screw through from inside the holder. And finally you need to make up a metal tab that fits into the drive out wedge slot in the quill such that it fits into the center shaft and receives the 10-32 screw. This filler plug needs to be long enough that it fits up far enough that you have roughly 3/32 inch or a hair less showing through the wedge slot in the quill. This lets you wedge it out after you're done. This tail piece is short,flat and tall as the slot so it still lets the center shaft turn. The tail piece also has a notch in the middle of it so it fits over the stub end of the filler screw but does not contact the screw. Instead it centers itself on the filler screw but rests the outer edges on the lower side of the slot.
TO secure the holder after all this is done you move the quill down and wedge out the drill chuck and arbor. Then insert the flat tail piece and the end mill holder. Using the long allen key insert the 10-32 screw up through the hole for the end mill and screw it into the tail piece. It need only be firmly snug, not tightened up hard But you now have a correctly locked in place end mill "chuck" in your drill press that won't let itself be walked out of the taper.
Notice I said to get a 3/8 inch holder. Even with all this any drill press that "only" has an MT2 quill is going to be too light and too flexible to use it even in wood with anything larger than a 3/8 end mill. So don't even THINK of using anything bigger such as rounded core box router bits or the like. The whole thing will just rock around like a big rubber band and ruin the wood.
Last of all you need some way to lock the quill in place. Even if you leave the quill up and use the table to control the cutting depth the shape of the end mills will pull the cutter downward. So you need some way to secure the quill vertically.
If you have the threaded rod depth limiter you can use that. Just take it apart and put one of the jam nuts on either side of the stop and tighten it so it locks the quill in place instead of only limiting the travel.
If you have the other style of depth stop you can't do it that way. Instead you need to totally remove the quill and drill through the side of the head casting and thread it for a couple of locking screws.
Use the highest speed it has for the drill with the end mills.
Listen to guntech and can-am. They tell it straight.
Many years ago when the price of a mid level, at that time, milling machine was beyond my finances and space allowances I purchased a cross slide vice. I was lucky enough to have found a very decent drill press which was belt driven of course that had spindles that would allow rotation speeds from 50 rpm to 1300 rpm. It was by no means a precision system that would get even close to cutting an acceptable receiver inlet. What it was good for was hogging out most of the hole to get close to where you need to be to finish up the inletting with hand tools for a final fit. A really good hand fitted inlet in properly seasoned and sealed wood can and will give you a stock that is very close to being as stable as many of the new plastic stocks, even the units with the aluminum bedding blocks. A properly inletted wood stock with or without pillars, with or without glass bedding is a thing of beauty and precision. Very few stockmakers can turn out such a stock today for a price that most of us can afford.
This is my bit of advice. Go to one of the Canadian stock makers websites and look at what they have to offer before you decide to take a $1000 blank and start hacking on it. Leave those for the professionals. Mind you if that is your final goal you have to start somewhere. Let me suggest something cheaper and softer to start out on. The first stock I ever carved came from a piece of very dark, old growth Cedar that came from a Lightning blasted log that had been on the ground for a least 50 years. My father and I were cutting it up for shake blocks and fence posts. We should have cut it into cants and stored it in the barn for twenty years and it would have paid off the mortgage. Anyway we cut the stock blank to keep the grain almost perfectly true to its grain. Just enough bias to bring out a semblance of grain.
The wood was perfectly seasoned. Bone dry. The big thing it was very easy to carve down with the basic tools at hand. These included an old hunting knife for cutting away the parts that didn't look like the stock inside, some old chisels that were originally intended for use on a wood lathe and sharpened so far down they were no longer suitable for that purpose and a very nice set of London Carvers round handle carving tools. My uncle had a set of old stones he no longer used so this was my tool kit. The other thing I had which was of great use was an old massive 10 in bench vice.
The soft wood did two things. It allowed me to proceed with a project at a pace that was within my capacities of patience at the time and taught me very quickly that dull tools really screwed things up quickly.
The stock came out very nicely and looked/felt/handled very well on the old Cooey Ranger it was mounted on. Obviously this stock would have been ridiculous on most center fire rifles.
There was a fellow here a few years ago that was carving Lee Enfield No1 stocks in a very limited kitchen space in a small apartment. His work looked fantastic from his pics. It was all done with a small hand held mult tool specially made for wood carving. If memory serves, he did use a couple of C clamps to hold pieces to his kitchen table for stability. The fellow had patience up the hoop and his stock was spectacular.
The thing with stock making is having the patience to do it right. Anyone can hog out a facsimile that looks OK but really isn't functional as the stresses included from a poor fit can and do influence accuracy.
In most cases a bit of judicious sanding of the barrel channel for clearance and glass bedding/adding pillars will fix most of the issues.
Just remember, PATIENCE is the word and secret to carving a functionally consistent stock that will not change enough with weather to make much of a difference.
If you still don't appreciate what damage a drill press will do as far as create more work please go to a cheap piece of lumber and experiment there.
I saw a fellow try to cut a barrel channel groove by setting up his drill press with a set of guides held in place with C clamps on a drill press table. What a mess. He ruined a $300 stock blank almost beyond repair.
Many years ago when the price of a mid level, at that time, milling machine was beyond my finances and space allowances I purchased a cross slide vice. I was lucky enough to have found a very decent drill press which was belt driven of course that had spindles that would allow rotation speeds from 50 rpm to 1300 rpm. It was by no means a precision system that would get even close to cutting an acceptable receiver inlet. What it was good for was hogging out most of the hole to get close to where you need to be to finish up the inletting with hand tools for a final fit. A really good hand fitted inlet in properly seasoned and sealed wood can and will give you a stock that is very close to being as stable as many of the new plastic stocks, even the units with the aluminum bedding blocks. A properly inletted wood stock with or without pillars, with or without glass bedding is a thing of beauty and precision. Very few stockmakers can turn out such a stock today for a price that most of us can afford.
This is my bit of advice. Go to one of the Canadian stock makers websites and look at what they have to offer before you decide to take a $1000 blank and start hacking on it. Leave those for the professionals. Mind you if that is your final goal you have to start somewhere. Let me suggest something cheaper and softer to start out on. The first stock I ever carved came from a piece of very dark, old growth Cedar that came from a Lightning blasted log that had been on the ground for a least 50 years. My father and I were cutting it up for shake blocks and fence posts. We should have cut it into cants and stored it in the barn for twenty years and it would have paid off the mortgage. Anyway we cut the stock blank to keep the grain almost perfectly true to its grain. Just enough bias to bring out a semblance of grain.
The wood was perfectly seasoned. Bone dry. The big thing it was very easy to carve down with the basic tools at hand. These included an old hunting knife for cutting away the parts that didn't look like the stock inside, some old chisels that were originally intended for use on a wood lathe and sharpened so far down they were no longer suitable for that purpose and a very nice set of London Carvers round handle carving tools. My uncle had a set of old stones he no longer used so this was my tool kit. The other thing I had which was of great use was an old massive 10 in bench vice.
The soft wood did two things. It allowed me to proceed with a project at a pace that was within my capacities of patience at the time and taught me very quickly that dull tools really screwed things up quickly.
The stock came out very nicely and looked/felt/handled very well on the old Cooey Ranger it was mounted on. Obviously this stock would have been ridiculous on most center fire rifles.
There was a fellow here a few years ago that was carving Lee Enfield No1 stocks in a very limited kitchen space in a small apartment. His work looked fantastic from his pics. It was all done with a small hand held mult tool specially made for wood carving. If memory serves, he did use a couple of C clamps to hold pieces to his kitchen table for stability. The fellow had patience up the hoop and his stock was spectacular.
The thing with stock making is having the patience to do it right. Anyone can hog out a facsimile that looks OK but really isn't functional as the stresses included from a poor fit can and do influence accuracy.
In most cases a bit of judicious sanding of the barrel channel for clearance and glass bedding/adding pillars will fix most of the issues.
Just remember, PATIENCE is the word and secret to carving a functionally consistent stock that will not change enough with weather to make much of a difference.
If you still don't appreciate what damage a drill press will do as far as create more work please go to a cheap piece of lumber and experiment there.
I saw a fellow try to cut a barrel channel groove by setting up his drill press with a set of guides held in place with C clamps on a drill press table. What a mess. He ruined a $300 stock blank almost beyond repair.
New Camper
CGN frequent flyer
- Location
- Lurking in the woods near SFRC.
My stock was from a blank I made... for that reason I didn't mention in my first post, the caveat repeatedly mentioned and that of course is the chuck is for drilling not milling. So yes, it can fall off the spindle and precision is difficult to achieve. There was lots of chisel and sanding work to finish the inletting which was all done before I formed and finished the contours of the stock.
The problem with the chuck coming off the taper from the side loading is that it falls down into the work. And with an MT2 tang the tab on the back keeps driving the cutter and ruins the work. At least if a one piece jacobs taper end quill style drill press is used and the Jacobs Taper works loose the chuck stops instantly with no drive.
As for steel I tried it enough to experience the gross chatter amount on my own drill press and quite. And even that was with super small cuts for both thickness and width. It's at best microscopically better than nothing. And frankly I'd rate hand tools for carving away steel as a better option.
As for steel I tried it enough to experience the gross chatter amount on my own drill press and quite. And even that was with super small cuts for both thickness and width. It's at best microscopically better than nothing. And frankly I'd rate hand tools for carving away steel as a better option.
