ST-1 Custom experiement

[McCreed]

Make sure a drill press has the reach to get to the hole location, small ones don’t.

Just to expound on what Andy said, a critical measurement on a drill press is called "throat depth". This is the distance from centre of chuck (ie: drill bit) to the vertical post that the table and motor are mounted to.

A lot of manufacturers label their machines with "swing" which is 2 x throat depth. For example my drill press has a 325mm swing, which equals 162.5mm throat depth, and is just deep enough to comfortably do a standard strat or tele body string-through. IIRC, a strat requires about 158mm or so.

I think I'll buy a cheap drill press when I replace the sander.

To buy a mid-range quality drill press big enough for this will likely be a minimum of $400. You can easily drop $800 on higher range ones, so "cheap" is dependent on the size of your wallet. I think my Trademaster TD1316 was $479 at the time.

[lunaticds]

Just to expound on what Andy said, a critical measurement on a drill press is called "throat depth". This is the distance from centre of chuck (ie: drill bit) to the vertical post that the table and motor are mounted to.

A lot of manufacturers label their machines with "swing" which is 2 x throat depth. For example my drill press has a 325mm swing, which equals 162.5mm throat depth, and is just deep enough to comfortably do a standard strat or tele body string-through. IIRC, a strat requires about 158mm or so.



To buy a mid-range quality drill press big enough for this will likely be a minimum of $400. You can easily drop $800 on higher range ones, so "cheap" is dependent on the size of your wallet. I think my Trademaster TD1316 was $479 at the time.

The depth of my wallet isn't .. that deep.
Doing it by hand it will be. It's not deep enough by around 50mm. I need the press for other things, so that's here nor there. I'll just need to go slow and maybe be a little more scientific that I normally would be.