Have you ever had to drill down the center of a wood blank on your wood lathe?

Most of us figure out that it is fairly easi to get a drill chuck on a morse taper and install it in the tailstock of your wood lathe and then push it into the piece of wood you are turning to drill a hole. That almost always works and gives the best results. However when you want to drill longer holes or larger holes it becomes a problem on the lathe ….especially if you are turning into endgrain.

Endgrain turns require a good set of forstner bits for the large 2″ to 3″ holes otherwise large twist drills do a much better job.

But there comes a time when you would like to stick your project on the drill press and just drill down that piece and get it over with. I don’t know if you ever tried that with ash or oak and using a 2″ or 3″ forstner bit but chances are you will get smacked in the head, hand, arm or body because those things can be wild. The piece you are drilling has to be properly anchored and you won’t be able to do that with one hand while the other hand is cranking down on the drill bit…….. guaranteed to take flight!

Verticle Drilling on Your Drill Press for Your Woodturning Projects

I thought I would post this video for those of you looking to do some vertical drilling. I know normally we chuck up the piece on the lathe and on the tailstock install a drill chuck and do our drilling that way.

At times it would be easier to do this on drill press. Or maybe you don’t have a MT mounted drill chuck for your tailstock.

Vertical Drilling for Forming
A Woodturning Chuck Recess

One of my favorite connections for my lathe chuck is the recess. I can drill a recess and leave it in the finished project if I want. I can chuck it back up if it moves too much, cracks or checks and refinish it. It is also a good area to put your logo or signature of some sort.

So when I first get a piece of wood ready to put on the wood lathe I will find centers on both ends and use a forstner bit that fits my jaws to drill a 1/2″ to 3/8″ hole on one end. I then simply chuck it up on the lathe and most times pull the tailstock up and I am turning in less than 5 minutes. So a jig that would hold my piece verticle could really come in handy when getting a piece of wood ready to turn with a recess.

Up until now I have held on to the piece with my hands …..doesn’t always work too well. I have used big wood clamps to hold the wood piece to be turned but then have to clamp down the clamp to the drill press table. …….so, I’m hoping I can come up with some sort of variation of the method that is explained in this video …..hope it can help you too!

Vertical drilling on a drill press can get pretty hairy …not to mention not very accurate. The guy in this video came up with an easy solution for vertical drilling a dowel and I thought we might be able to apply it to some of our projects in some form.

This gives me some ideas on how to take cylinders I have turned and need to drill a hole down the center for a rod ….lets say for making rolling pins. Or even for wood turning tools I’m making and forgot to drill the hole before turning the tool……ALWAYS REMEMBER TO DRILL THE TOOL HOLE FIRST 🙂

Or if I am making a coffee cup and want to start the hollowing process with a forstner bit. Although I do that now on the lathe, I think it might be easier if I had a dedicated station for drilling down the center of the cut or vase while it was in the verticle postion. Gravity, plumbness (verticle postion) could all be checked easily.

If drilling a turned piece on the drill press I would leave the tennon on. I would make the tennon larger than usual and clamp it into the piece of wood.

I’m gonna have to give this a try and see how stable it would be and how big a hole I could drill.

Modify the Holding Jig to Hold the Bottom of the Piece and New the Top to Keep it Stable and in Control

Short pieces like the dowel in the video should work fine but if you were doing a 6″ cut or 12″ vase you might want to set up the jig to hold the bottom and someplace in the middle to the top.

Also remember that most drill presses have a hole in the center of the drill press table which would allow you to drill center holes in 3′, 4′ or larger pieces.

Sorry for lack of details, but I wanted to throw this out for you guys to see if you could use any part of the jig or process or have it be a source of some creative juices for something you might build or need.

#shoptip #centerdrilling