Drill Press

The drill press is a stationary drilling machine that, thanks to its column-mounted body and vertical spindle, holds the bit on the same axis with every plunge. Its role in the pipe workshop can be summed up in one sentence: the bowl, smoke channel, and mortise bored into a briar block have to align to within a fraction of a millimeter, and a hand-held drill can't hold that alignment. The machine's value in the workshop comes not from its power but from the angle between spindle and table never changing — that is, from holes drilled at the same setting repeating each other exactly.

Setup and Clamping the Block

Drilling doesn't start until the block is secured to the table. The usual way is a machine vise; it both grips the block firmly and slides finely across the table so the bit lands exactly where intended. For angled bowls or curved channels, the axis is changed by tilting the vise or the table; the bit still comes down vertically while the block meets it at the desired angle.

At what stage the block gets drilled is a matter of workshop preference. Some makers mount the raw block directly on the machine and drill first, shaping the form afterward around those axes; others rough out the shape first, then drill. This distinction is treated separately under shape first, then drill, and in the community it's seen not as a hard rule but as a difference in habit.

The Machine's Limits

How well a given machine suits pipe work is largely judged by three settings. The first is speed: low speed is considered essential for a clean, unburned hole in briar that doesn't drift off axis. On cheap models, speed is changed in steps by moving a belt between pulleys by hand; higher-end machines have a variable-speed motor. The second is the table's ability to raise and lower — an adjustment found on nearly every machine that can seem trivial, but which factors directly into pipe work by letting the block move closer to the spindle and make full use of the available plunge.

The real constraint lies in the third: the distance the quill can travel in a single plunge, the stroke. This distance is the upper limit on how long a hole can be drilled, and on ordinary machines it's measured in a few centimeters. That's no problem for a short-shanked billiard; it's pushed to the limit on long-shanked shapes like the Canadian or hawkbill. That's why most makers turn to drilling on the lathe for long smoke channels, where depth is set not by the quill but by the length of the bit and the lathe bed.

Its Relationship to the Lathe

The drill press isn't the only drilling tool in the workshop. Because the metal lathe allows both deeper holes and finishing the mortise and shank work in a single setup, a significant share of experienced makers gravitate to the lathe over time. Even so, the press doesn't disappear from the workshop entirely: because it's quick to set up and easy to learn, it stays in use for the bowl's initial hole, mouthpiece bores, and various auxiliary jobs. Shaping and sanding, meanwhile, are the domain of entirely different machines like the belt sander.