I prefer a benchtop drill press because of the storage capacity and mobility a wheeled cabinet beneath it provides. However, it annoys me that the area under the machine tends to be such an unusable mess, especially when every bit of staging space in my small shop is precious. The awkwardly shaped machine base doesn’t serve well as a platform, and just attracts shop detritus. My solution was to outfit the cabinet top with a platform that covers the machine base and provides a useful surface. To create it, I simply screwed together a frame of the appropriate height around the edges of the cabinet, and then topped the frame with twin panels, scribing and sawing out a cutaway to accommodate the machine post. Do not glue the parts in place, as you’ll want to remove them someday.(p.s.: The platform makes a great hiding place. Sh-h-h-h.)
—Anthony Fisher, Sebastopol, California
