Mortising Attachment for drill press

[Macsauce2012]

I am back for more of you alls assistance. I will add pictures of everything at the end of this post. I was just given what seems to be an incomplete set of a mortising attachment tool. From what I can tell, it was made by Greenlee in Chicago. I have the part that secures itself to the drill press(seems to be missing a nut and bolt to fit tight) and a few different mortising bits. I have a Craftsman 219000 laser Trac drill press and I'm not even sure if this mortising attachment will even fit my machine. The reason I say that is because I can't seem to get the fitting up over the part that tightens the bit into place. From the videos I have seen, other than an actual fence, it seems to be missing some couplings that would help with attaching it firmly to the drill press. Any feedback is appreciated. I am also not good with all of the terminology so sorry in advance!

[Black walnut]

I can't tell for sure but it looks like you need to remove the black clamp that might hold your depth stop rod. The mortising attachment came with several clamshell bushings to fit the attachment to different sized drill presses. Mine came with I think three different sizes. I thought I wrote a tool review way back when I bought it but can't seem to find that so I guess I just did a post, probably in tool talk. I am mostly satisfied with mine but really only use it for softwoods. I have tried it in hardwood and at the 1/4" size it seems fine but rather slow.

[mpc]

Your drill press appears to have a laser mechanism clamped to the non-rotating part of the assembly (the quill); the mortiser frame needs to clamp there too. If that frame won't even fit over your drill press chuck though it's is fairly useless. By the time you buy a new chuck and the pieces missing from your mortising kit you'd have spent as much money as a new kit that fits your drill press. Many kits are designed for a specific quill diameter while others are fairly large and use rings or other adapters to work with narrower quills.

You'll also need a sacrificial table or platform to make through-mortices and a fence with "Y" shaped hold-down fingers. Some sort of hold-down is almost mandatory with morticers as the square chisel bit tends to stick in the workpiece - trying to lift it.

mpc

[durango dude]

I was just given an unused delta drill press mortising kit. I looked it up in a few forums, and the consensus opinion seems to be, "get a real mortiser"

There's a reason some things are free.

[Black walnut]

You are right durango dude . I bought my DP kit along with a Ryobi bench drill press when I was getting ready to build my youngest son's toddler bed. I was using pine to make it. I have used it a few times since but not much. At the time I didn't think I could afford a dedicated benchtop mortiser. Hindsight I am sure I could have found a way.

[cwsmith]

Not sure when or where I read it, but I seem to recall someone writing that a dedicated mortiser is far better to use and it takes a lot of wear off the your drill press quill. Honestly, the only dedicated mortiser that I've ever seen was a Craftsfman at the local Sears store back when. It's operating lever was certainly far more robust than what my Ridgid drill press would be able to do. From a 'mechanical advantage' point-of-view it looked like a lot more effort and perhaps strain on the DP quill would be required.

CWS