Using a small drill press to drill extra long pieces

In my workshop, I have a benchtop drill press. A floor standing drill press would be handy at times, but I prefer a benchtop drill press because I can have storage underneath it.

But sometimes, there is a need to drill a hole accurately in the end of a long piece of wood. One solution is to make a horizontal boring jig. But recently, I have discovered another solution to this problem.

Simply take the drill press and rotate it so that it's facing away from you. Then loosen the setscrews that hold the head assembly to the column and turn the whole head assembly towards yourself.

Then pull pull the drill press to the edge of the workbench. You can now drill pieces as long as it is far to the floor.

If your workbench has drawers, pulling out a drawer at the right height can be very handy for propping up the stock to be drilled at the right height.

It does help to have some pieces of scrap wood handy to stack them up and bring the work piece to the right height, seeing that there's no drill press table to use in this configuration.

You can see this techynique used at 3:45 into this video.

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