richarddownunder
Established Member
Hi
I'm in the process of building a guitar which calls for a 3/8 square hole in the neck to insert a metal 'anchor' to enable attachment of the neck to the body. Anyway, since the book I'm following didn't recommend trying to make a 60 mm deep square hole by hand, I bought a 'cheap' mortise kit for my Ryobi drill press (which wasn't really that cheap at all). The first lesson is that a small 'handyman' drill press isn't up to the task. Mortise bits, I discovered, require quite a bit of downward force to chisel around the bit. The good news is I have a friend who has all manner of heavy weight tools so I turned up and...lesson 2, drill presses have different sized quills and the mortise kit doesn't fit them all! So, my friend turned up a new collar to adapt the mortise kit to fit one of the drills, then he gave me the drill (well I 'swapped' it for a modest quantity of beer). =D> The drill press (pictured) is ~60 years old and handled the mortise job with ease. So, lesson 3 is they don't make em like that any more. This drill weighs a lot . 2 fairly large blokes struggled to lift it! But for all of its ~60 years of use, there is absolutely no play in the bearings and it drills perfectly true. So, I feel like I've had a good weekend!! For those interested in such things, its a Richardson e39 of Australian origins.
Cheers
Richard
I'm in the process of building a guitar which calls for a 3/8 square hole in the neck to insert a metal 'anchor' to enable attachment of the neck to the body. Anyway, since the book I'm following didn't recommend trying to make a 60 mm deep square hole by hand, I bought a 'cheap' mortise kit for my Ryobi drill press (which wasn't really that cheap at all). The first lesson is that a small 'handyman' drill press isn't up to the task. Mortise bits, I discovered, require quite a bit of downward force to chisel around the bit. The good news is I have a friend who has all manner of heavy weight tools so I turned up and...lesson 2, drill presses have different sized quills and the mortise kit doesn't fit them all! So, my friend turned up a new collar to adapt the mortise kit to fit one of the drills, then he gave me the drill (well I 'swapped' it for a modest quantity of beer). =D> The drill press (pictured) is ~60 years old and handled the mortise job with ease. So, lesson 3 is they don't make em like that any more. This drill weighs a lot . 2 fairly large blokes struggled to lift it! But for all of its ~60 years of use, there is absolutely no play in the bearings and it drills perfectly true. So, I feel like I've had a good weekend!! For those interested in such things, its a Richardson e39 of Australian origins.
Cheers
Richard
