This page is the start of my Christmas spending spree.  Of course, everything was purchased under the flag, of "plane building".  This page details my upgrades to tools.  I had another spending spree with Chief Aircraft and Van's for things like antennas, ELT, and Electric Fuel Pumps....  I will detail the plane parts later.

Being fed up with my little bench top drill press, I decided that it was time to upgrade.  A friend at work has done a lot of investigation of what tools to buy for his shop and he recommended Grizzly as a compromise between quality and price.  After doing some research, I decided to go with the drill press below.  It has a nice big table to mount a cross vise, milling table, etc.  I am sure that it won't be great for milling, but I'll bet it will be better than the little Crapsman bench top drill press I have been using.

UPDATE:  The drill press is huge.  I got a chuckle on this when I turned it on for the first time.  The lights in the garage dimmed.  They may have dimmed in the house too.  Anyway, as soon as I turned on the drill press, Tami came out to the garage to see what was going on.  It has a pretty good sized motor on it (1.5 hp).  The drill is solid and accurate.  If I was going to do this over, I would probably get a smaller drill press.  Otherwise, this mondo size drill press works great.  I would consider the Grizzly G7944.  See link below:

http://www.grizzly.com/products/12-Speed-Heavy-Duty-14-Floor-Drill-Press/G7944

I got a dolly that can be used to mount the drill press to so that I can somewhat move it around the garage.

UPDATE:  This seems to be okay for moving the drill press around, however, what I don't like about it is that you do lose some stability of the drill press.  Since I already have the drill press on this dolly, I am going to leave it there for now.  If I was to do this over again, I probably would leave this off of my shopping list.  However, if you absolutely need to be able to move a drill press around the shop, this will do it.  

I also added a milling table to supplement the cross-vice that Kevin is letting me borrow.

UPDATE:  This milling table is a piece of crap.  Okay, I may be a little harsh here...  Maybe is just isn't that great.  It seems to settle out a little when you throw a 40 pound milling vise on top of it.  It probably doesn't help that a drill press doesn't make a good mill, however, my results with this table were basically so-so.  The cross vice that Kevin is letting me use works a heck of a lot better than this table (except when trying to mill an edge at an angle).

I went crazy and also got this clamping kit.  I currently have to scrounge for hardware to mount something to the drill press.  This kit is specifically made for that purpose.  And, it was relatively cheap so I am not out of a ton of money if it don't work that well.

UPDATE:  The clamping kit works great.  You kind of have to scratch your head though to figure out what clamping combination it takes to secure something to the drill press table.

I also got a small end mill set.  The sizes here are hard to have perspective on.  The smallest end mill is 1/8".  I went with 4-flute end mills hoping that these won't chatter as much as the 2-flute end mills.

UPDATE:  The end mills work well.  The 4-flute end mill is not actually recommended for aluminum, but they work well.  I find that I have to stop periodically to clear the mill of chips.  I ordered some premium 2-flute end mills for work on the planes aluminum parts.

Grizzly also had a decent reamer set.  For the little use I will put them through, I am sure that they will be fine.  I don't believe that there are very many cases where I will have to ream parts out.  I know of two cases where you need to ream some bushings to 1/4".  Anyway, these weren't that expensive.

UPDATE:  These are SHARP.  While removing the shipping plastic, I sliced my fingers open.  Ouch.  For the price, if they work, this was a good deal compared to what else I have seen out on the web.

I also ordered a "over / under" reamer set.  This reamer set has has one each reamer that is + or - 0.001" of the more popular reamer sizes and can be used to allow either a slip fit or a press fit.  I have a couple of places I am looking to do a press fit.  aka:  Delrin bushing for an aileron stop, etc.  These may come in handy for something like that.

I broke down and ordered a bench top CNC mill.  I have a few ideas for some parts upgrade for the RV.  A couple of ideas I have, I haven't seen other builders or companies make.  I will keep those ideas to myself until I have actually made one of them....  Anyway, I got engrossed in the mill idea after I saw the accuracy that could be had just by using a drill press and a cross vise.  With CNC, the possibilities are only limited by the imagination (and table size....  I didn't get a huge mill).

YES, I know that this is NOT necessary for the project...   Being kind of a computer geek, this is right up my alley.  I look forward to using this to improve the build quality of some of my projects parts....   Look for those parts in future web log entries.

Okay, now you have to have some way to clamp it all down.  I ordered two vises that I should be able to use on the mill.  This is a precision 4" vise.  This is a pretty big vice and it is heavy.  Something like 40 pounds.  It seemed to settle out the X-Y table I bought for the drill press. 

I also got this smaller milling vise.  This is probably more appropriately sized for a small mill.  This vise has v-grooves in it to hold tubular stock in both the horizontal and vertical orientations.

Merry Christmas to me.  Anyway, I took the evening off after I got done spending my money.  We were having an ice storm and I had to put Tami's mini-van in the garage so we didn't have to chip ice for an hour the next morning.