The thread about drilling in the end of a rod reminded me of this trick. An old maintenance machinist had a task a few years ago where he had to drill out the hole in a 5" long painted wood handle from 3/8" to 5/8", 4 " deep. Only problem was, there was thousands and thousands of them, and this was to be ongoing for quite a while, using up existing stock. He took a heavy duty industrial drill press and removed the entire drilling head. Removed the table, replaced the drilling head on the column upside down. Slid the head to the lower end of the column and replaced table. Mounted an air vise with conformed jaws to hold the handles vertically onto the table, hole down, centered over the table center hole. Found an old pneumatic drill press feed in storage and mounted it to drive the quill movement. Added a vacuum near the upside down drill and table hole to capture chips. Made up a few control functions and had a semi-automatic handle driller. Place handle in, hit two hand buttons, vise clamped, drill drilled, vise opened. Chips fall away by gravity in this method, and the vacuum cleaned things up a bit. A bearing went out in the head of the drill press after the old machinist had died, the need for the press was no longer due to stock depletion, so it was relegated to storage. I replaced the old machinist at work, so the new owner told me to get rid of the old unit. Told me to just get it out of his sight and make it disappear. Took it home, took it apart, machined a reducer sleeve to allow a modern bearing to replace the obsolete failed one, switched it back to normal, painted it and it now resides proudly in my shop. Damn good drill press. Nothing like a good history to make one appreciate a well made tool. I thought others might also benefit from some of the ideas in this story.
RJ