Wilton Drill Press any good?

Well, f'sure Wilton is no longer Wilton.... But 9 years ago I spent $405 on mebbe a 10" import, and sears was about the same. You don't seem to be able to find the drill-press equivalent of the

4x6 horz'l saw. So mebbe $500 for a 15" is not so bad.

I would check HF first, tho. I spent $500 on a Dayton winch from goddamm Grainger years ago, and just bought another one, better/quieter for $75 at HF. goodgawd....

Oh yeah, actually a 17" dp--8.5" from chuck to column. So slightly bigger than the enco deal.

Poor quality, actually, but, like the 4x6 saw, has been pretty useful/reliable. Plus, it gives me ample opportunity to complain. :) Floor standing, 5/8" chuck (lousy chuck), swivel/tilting table, zillion speeds (3 stepped pulley system). Pretty heavy. Added a worklight, outlets, and fooled w/ the motor windings so's I can reverse the 1 ph motor, as I was doing a lot of tapping at one time, and needed to get the tap out some way.

But nothing, it seems, can be worse than the new spate of home shop tools Sears is hustling. Ostensibly nice bandsaws, etc, but really just absolute crap. It seems to me the designers had to go out of their way to make stuff that bad. Seems to me it would be *easier* to make half-decent stuff, by just dumbing down (a little) the good stuff that already exists.

Wilton is now part of WMH group, which also includes Jet. It's probably a pretty good-quality import. I have a Wilton vertical bandsaw that I have been quite satisfied with. It's no Do-All, but at 1/3 the price I didn't expect it to be.

$500 for an import 15" DP? My take is that's way too high. I figure a good price on a clean (like-new) Wilton or Jet 17" drill press is $275-ish.

There is quite a difference between 17" and 15".

GWE

Wilton at one time used to make some pretty darn good stuff, however now most of what they make mimicks the import crap..........I looked at a Wilton metal cutting bandsaw a few years back, and it IMHO was cheezy for the asking price.....Thats what prompted me to make my own

20" 3-wheel metal cutting bandsaw which is as good as any Wilton or Jet IMHO. Other than a crapped out speed control which I had bought used, its worked like a champ, has never had any problems and its used hard all the time. I do not know what DoAll or others could offer in the way of improvements or doing it any better but if it works it works.......but I still hate paying for junk .

Years back when the local HF opened up here I was in the market for a drill press myself. I went through 3 HF floor models that had such excessive runout and slop, and left a lot to be desired. Then I stumbled on an old Delta, which is a real champ. We had a Wiolton DP, as well as 3 Deltas of various sizes at work, and the Wilton was a much better drill press than those newer Deltas were, but the Wilton was also an older model so that probably has a lot to do with it.

I had this drill press. Way overpriced for the it's level of quality. I sold mine and got 17" floor model ShopFox for $270. Same level of quality bigger machine. Wish I could spend $1000 on drill press and get a decent machine not import crap :(

Norm Dresner wrote:

For $1000 you can buy a used mill-drill, those aren't great mills but they make great drill presses!

GWE