Square up Your Drill Press Table

When you walk up to your drill press to drill one or multiple holes, you expect that the hole will be square to the surface of the material that you are drilling. If you didn’t care about that, you might just use a handheld drill. So, with an expectation of square drilling, what a lot of woodworkers do is check for square using a machinists square that you set on the drill press check it against a drill bit that is mounted in the chuck. That should give you a general idea as to whether the drill press table is in the ballpark of being square, but it is not a very precise way to asses this because you’re working with a tiny reference plane.

In order to have a better gauge as to whether your drill press table is perpendicular to the travel path of the chuck, you will want to take a few simple steps:

Fashion a simple gauge. George will explain how to create your own testing tool that can be fashioned from material that you probably already have in your shop.

Install and use the simple gauge. The gauge will be installed in your drill press chuck in the same way that you would install a standard drill bit.

Follow the steps and check for square. This approach will give you much greater precision than other methods, and will allow you to make tiny adjustments to the table’s angle as you “sneak up” on the desired perpendicular condition.

After you get your drill press dialed in, you will enjoy the precision that it will deliver. Perhaps this will inspire you to explore some additional tool-related videos to help you to better understand how to make the most of the tools that you have in your shop.