I am slowly fixing all the annoying features of this house we bought.
I may never get all of them corrected. But have a temporary solution
to one.

The house is mostly wired with 14 gauge wire and 15 amp breakers. So
the drill press with a 1.5 hp motor will pop the circuit breaker if
used for very long. The long term solution is to add a 220 volt 20 amp
circuit, change out the motor for a three phase motor and use a VFD.
But there are lots of other things that are more pressing.

So the temporary fix is to add a 40 ufd run capacitor in parallel with
the motor. That corrects the power factor a bit and drops the current
enough that the circuit breaker does not pop. The savings in power is
pretty much nothing, but having the power stay on is priceless.

Dan