Browse our complete collection of benchtop drill press reviews, floor drill guides, chuck & vise setups, and maintenance tips.
The smart way to buy a budget drill press is not to find the cheapest machine that drills a hole. It is to know exactly which corners are safe to cut and which ones will cost you every time you switch the press on. A well-chosen budget press skips...
The Milwaukee 4203 is one of the most recognizable names in magnetic drilling. It is the adjustable-position electromagnetic base that a Milwaukee motor unit mounts to, and generations of steel fabricators, ironworkers, and maintenance crews have ...
For most of the twentieth century, if an American home shop had a drill press, there was a good chance it came from Sears. Sold under the Craftsman name and carrying Sears model numbers, these machines were built in huge numbers across many sizes,...
Almost every drill press owner faces this one eventually. The belt glazes, cracks, or stretches, and the press starts slipping under load, squealing on startup, or buzzing with a vibration that was not there last year. A drill press belt replaceme...
The machine usually shows up the same way: a garage sale, a retiring neighbor, an estate cleanout. Heavy cast iron, orange or gray paint gone chalky, a chuck frozen with decades of dried oil, and a price that feels almost rude it is so low. A Craf...
The fastest way to waste money on a vintage Craftsman drill press is to order a part that looks right in a photo. A pulley that is a quarter inch off, a chuck with the wrong taper, a belt an inch too long, and you are out the money and no closer t...
A Buffalo drill press is the kind of machine that outlives its owner. Buffalo Forge Company built industrial drills in Buffalo, New York for generations, and the ones still turning today are a testament to how they were made: heavy, simple, and en...
JET presses are modern, well-made machines, which means chuck removal is usually clean and predictable, no seized vintage tapers to fight. Whether you are swapping to a keyless chuck or clearing a taper that has started to slip, removing the chuck...
Cal Hawk is one of those brands you meet at a swap meet, a tool outlet, or a marketplace listing rather than a showroom. It is an import label that has put its name on light-duty benchtop drill presses over the years, and that makes it a slightly ...
Somebody offers you a used Craftsman 10-inch drill press with a 1/2 HP motor for the price of a nice dinner, and you feel the pull. I have felt it too. These old Sears-built benchtop presses show up at estate sales and on marketplace listings ever...
Wilton presses lean toward the heavier, more industrial end of the bench, and that build shows up at the chuck: a larger capacity chuck on a solid Morse taper that has been seated under real clamping force. Removing the chuck from a Wilton drill p...
There is a version of this idea that is genuinely useful and a version that will send a chunk of wood across your shop. The difference comes down to whether you use the drill press to spin work for hand shaping, which it does well, or try to make ...
