Drilling angles with a drill press
I am new to using a drill press, and need to drill 4 angles for 4 dowel rods in a stright, long piece of wood. I have the angles, and the wood I am drilling in is straight and sqaure.
For the mental picture, I am attempting to drill the angles so that the dowls fan out from each other (75, 85, 95, 105 degress), parallel to the piece of wood (almost as if I were creating a paper fan). The problem I am having is it is really important that the dowels are on the same plane as the wood itself… that is, they need to be parallel to the wood (no compound angle at all).
How do you sqaure up the drill press so that you can set the bevel of the table to the angle you want, and be sure that you are drilling straight into the wood so that the dowel doesn’t end up moving to one side or the other (i.e. how do you make sure you do not introduce a compound angle). There is a ton of posts about drilling 90 degree angles, but very little about how to drill straight angles with the drill press.
Thanks
Replies
So I played with the drill press a bunch today, and let me know what you guys think of this approach.
Basically, if you tilt the table to 90 degress (as if you were going to cut into a table leg), with a fence on the table. Then put a straight edge on the fence. I can then use the straight edge to make sure the fence is parallel and the table is perfectly 90 degrees. If done right, a test cut should make a perfectly straight cut into the piece.
Once thats done, I can lock down the fence, and mosve the bevel of the table to the desired angle. This should in theory get me the angle that I want, while the other compound angle is parallel with the wood.
I think this would work, as 90 degrees should be a lot easier to dial in. Do yo uguys see anything wrong with this... and are there any other better ideas?
I am happy to say that my idea worked. I have included a picture of the finished product. I had to create two of these, and they cam out perfect. I could not have asked for a better result. Now, I just have to finish the base, and sand everything.
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