Drill Press Issues

As we’re putting together our wood shop, we decided to pick up a drill press, and settled on the Shop Fox W1668 because it was small enough to manage, but still had enough power to do what we need. Amazon had the best price and it was prime eligible, so that made the decision on where to order easy. When it arrived, it looked decent, but there had been some serious issues during shipping. The headstock had suffered some serious impacts and was pretty badly damaged. The drive system housing was pretty badly dented and bent, and not just the door. Also, the motor housing had been bent to the point where the motor wouldn’t spin freely. There was a lot of scraping and binding when we tried to spin it by hand. All of this damage was caused by poor packaging not protecting the parts from rough treatment during shipping. Styrofoam blocks aren’t enough padding for something that weighs over one hundred pounds. And the box should have been strapped down to a pallet instead of just being double boxed. That would have protected it from quite a bit of the impact damage. Amazon did step up and send us another one when we called them, and it arrived intact.

In addition to the shipping damage there were some quality control issues that would have required us to open an RMA even if the first one had arrived intact. The column from the first unit was missing one of the four holes used to bolt it down to the base. Thankfully the one in the second box was correct, so we used that one. In addition, there was a bubble in the casting of the table that was in the second box, so we used the one from the first box.

We now have a fully assembled and functional drill press, and I’ve done some test drills to verify the functionality. It’s working exactly as expected and will be a nice addition to the shop. Just be careful when you order it…

Inside the box.

Inside the box.

Inside the box.

Inside the box.

Damaged headstock.

Damaged headstock.

The column with the missing hole.

The column with the missing hole.

The table from the second drill press, showing the casting issue.

The table from the second drill press, showing the casting issue.

Real Pirates Exhibition At Moody Gardens

We’re down in Galveston for the Independence Day holiday, spending time with the family and making sure Reese is getting some Nana time. We’re not going too crazy, but we did go over to Moody Gardens to check out the Real Pirates Exhibition at the Discovery Museum.

They’ve got a bunch of artifacts from the Whydah, a slave ship turned pirate ship from the early 1700s. There’s an exhibition around the artifacts that discusses the slave trade, piracy, and life aboard a real pirate ship, using those artifacts to illustrate. It’s amazing to see how well the items have survived almost 300 years in the ocean. Even some of the textiles were in decent condition.