I think that's the drill I've got.
I'd spent over a year looking for a used Meddings but without luck. I was in Axminster buying a new drum sander and I was offered a good deal on this as a package so took it.
The trade off for a woodworker is between
accuracy and
capacity. The drills sold as "woodworking" will tend to have more throat depth and greater drilling depth, but they won't have the accuracy. As the saying goes "you pays your money and you takes your choice".
This drill is bob on accurate, delivering very clean and repeatable holes even at it's maximum capacity, there's no run out that I can measure (even with some fairly sophisticated measuring kit), the depth stop is superb (way better than a Fobco I'd used in a previous workshop) you can easily set it to a quarter of a mill without any faffing about with slip gauges, it all functions very smoothly, and I've used it to make some extremely demanding furniture pieces like the fold out wings for drop leaf tables.
The trade off is limited capacity. So for example I've had to redesign the air hole pattern for the ply bases I use for drop-in upholstered chair seats,
Nothing in this world is perfect and one criticism I'd make is the drill table, which is clearly designed for engineering rather than woodwork and uses non-standard T-nuts which weren't included. That was a right old faff and I'm still not completely happy with the result.
Regarding delivery, I really didn't think that was a problem. Pretty much all new machinery comes protected with a thick layer of grease and I'd judge that a good thing. Although it's a big old lump it's easy enough to "walk it" off the pallet and manoeuvre it around the workshop, after all look at the massive stuff Wallace humps around even with his dodgy back! The Axminster delivery driver went "above and beyond" as they always have with me so no criticisms there.
I always think it's a bit soppy when you read these fan boy reviews where someone raves about a machine like a love struck teenager, so I'll avoid that by just saying it's a decent bit of kit that does most of the important things I ask of it in a commercial workshop, but hey, there's always room for improvement. If the specs work for you and you get a decent price then go for it, if not keep looking, there's plenty of choices out there.
Good luck!
