Finished My Drill Press!

[Adam Kaufman]

I finally decided to clean and paint my 1963 Delta/Rockwell 15-017 (15-077) DP. I didn't fully restore it and it's not winning any awards at the concours d'elegance, but I think it came out great. There's a few parts I'd like to get for it, but for the prices I'm seeing... fugetaboutit.

I bought some Sherwin Williams Oil Based Enamel and started to brush, but I soon realized that I wasn't going to get the finish I was hoping for. So, I ran to Harbor Freight and bought a purple HVLP gun, hooked it up to my little 1.5 hp 3.5 CFM@90 psi compressor and was VERY pleasantly surprised. I thinned it with about 20% mineral spirits and went to town.

I was going to strip and repaint the Baldor 1/3 hp motor, but when I tried to take it apart, the leads from the windings and capacitor were so brittle they started to break off. I bought a Grizzly 3/4 hp TEFC and it's great!

I know the color isn't for everyone and I thought about going Delta gray! Let's liven things up a bit. I chose Cayenne for a color... Here's a before and a couple of after pics...

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[Von Bickley]

Looks good to me......

[Dave Cullen]

Kewl. I have a Rockwell one of similar vintage, and elected to keep it grey. I bought it for the 6 inch spindle travel which comes in handy for a lot of things. Only thing I don't like is the table is manually positioned (and heavy) but buying a new table with the the crank and gear rack would have been expensive.

Enjoy it.

[David G Baker]

Dave, I mounted a heavy duty coil spring on my 1974 Craftsman Commercial drill press as an assist to lift the table and it works very good. I have a heavy duty off brand drill press that has the crank and gear rack but the crank was cast iron and it broke and I had to replace it with a nut that was fastened to the crank head and I use a socket wrench on the nut. It works okay too.
Adam, Your paint job looks great.

[John A langley]

I see the cat does not like, it looks real good

[jack forsberg]

there is not one better thing in life than to drill a hole in a press you work on. Trust me.

I think it make delta look great.

[Phil Thien]

It looks great. And when it comes to the color, well, at least you will never misplace it!

:D

[Dave Kirby]

Hey, I personally think you did a beautiful job! Nothing wrong with a nice exciting drill press! :)

[Mark Carlson]

Love the color. Sick of grey, green, white and gold.

[Joe Kieve]

I missed the cat the first time around. Had to go back and look again. Yep, there it was, right on top.
Nice paint job....you make Ridgid proud.

[Mike Wilkins]

Nice resto job. But the cat appears to not like the new paint scheme.

[Adam Kaufman]

....you make Ridgid proud.

Oh man, I never thought of that! At least it's not an exact match...

I was going to go with a sort of British racing green, but I didn't want it to look too much like a Grizzly. I'm still trying to figure out what color to paint my 1950 Unisaw.

[Rick Potter]

Dave,

My buddy mounted a HF trailer jack upside down under his DP table. Cheap, and works well.

Rick Potter

[HANK METZ]

Color makes it easy to find that sucka in the dark!

Nice resto, some guys fill those table holes but for woodworking you'll probably clap an auxiliary table on it anyway, makes it much more useful.

[Brian W Smith]

Love a good DP,yours would be an asset to any shop.

For elevation........Most DP work falls into a range of heights that is within the lift cap. of a scizzor jack(supplied with cars).The "trick" is you need to build a cabinet that lives on DP base.It's spec'd on height to utilize the jack.Once in a great while you may have to move base cab,so maybe a roller cabinet.For years we had one of those cheap C-man lower boxes(the shorter ones).Had a Maple BB top on it.The nice part,besides having your tooling at the ready....is.You can roll it out on big jobs and it's used for staging parts on,off to side,where convenient.We'd throw the jack into the bttm of box.

[Joe Kieve]

Oh man, I never thought of that! At least it's not an exact match...

I was going to go with a sort of British racing green, but I didn't want it to look too much like a Grizzly. I'm still trying to figure out what color to paint my 1950 Unisaw.

How about John Deere green for the Uni???? FWIW, you can get an almost exact match for Delta gray at Sherwin-Williams. Will get the number off the can and PM you if you're interested.

[Howard Rosenberg]

Great idea!

Now you'll always be able to find it!

Howard

[Bill Geibe]

Nice Ridgid drill press! Oh - never mind. :rolleyes:

Nice job, BTW! Looks like a pretty big motor on that DP.

Bill

[Michael W. Clark]

If you ever go to sell it, post it on the Knoxville CL., you'll get twice the going rate.

[Lee Reep]

I know the color isn't for everyone and I thought about going Delta gray! Let's liven things up a bit. I chose Cayenne for a color... Here's a before and a couple of after pics...



I love the design that went into the shape of so many tools of the past. Orange? I have a few Ridgid tools, so I like the color. Besides, you have plenty of gray color in your shop -- it needed some "pop". ( I think I've watched too many fix and flip shows with my wife.) :)