"Lawrence A. Ramsey" wrote in message
...
Now you just hit on a marvelous idea! Why CAN't we do dovetails on a
drill press?

On Sat, 18 Oct 2003 01:07:02 -0400, Silvan
wrote:

Lots of folks here have a router in their pocket, a router on their tool
belt, a router in their backpack, a router in the table, and a spare
router
under the bench.

Many of you just seem to absolutely *love* these things.

I just cut my first dovetails today. I did them by hand, with an X-acto
razor saw. They came out pretty well, considering it was my first try,
and
it occurs to me that I have no desire to buy the jig and the bit and futz
around with the setup in order to save myself time by doing these with a
machine some day.

I'm finding the more I do with chisels and hand planes, the less I'm
interested in using a router to do things. I've never used my router for
much anyway. It's a bad router, granted, but even if it didn't have the
problems it does, I don't think I'd like it. Seems like you have to
spend
forever changing bits, changing depths, changing bases, setting up
templates or jigs or hold-downs or fences or some damn thing in order to
use the thing for three minutes and save yourself a little physical
labor.

True, I do this all the time on the drill press. I spend 15 minutes
changing the setup to make one hole in one piece sometimes, then turn
around and do it again. I love playing with my drill press, and I don't
mind the setup time. Yet when faced with the same problem on another
machine, I can rarely be bothered to get it out and futz with it. My
router table usually serves as a temporary holding area for stuff I need
to
put away. It's totally paradoxical.

Am I nuts? How is it that this most marvelous and alluring tool does not
excite me?

Just wondering if I'm the only one, I guess.

I think I'm turning into a Neander.

Anything less than a industrial strength drill press will have their
bearings destroyed in very short order. They are not designed to take high
side loads.
--
Jim in NC