Odd Pin Block

[jimialeggio5 at comcast.net]

 <Ron wrote: 
 
< I drill in the piano, with my hovercraft drill press setup, and the 
second pass seems to center pretty much automatically with a 
regular jobber bit. Maybe there's a potential problem I'm not 
aware of here. What sort of drilling rig and procedure do you use?

Ron,

I'm trying to define a drilling procedure  which will allow the use of full
thickness Delignit blocks. 

As someone who has used way more old growth timber in his career
than he really would have liked,a pinblock situation seems to me to
be a prime situation where the use an engineered product, like Delignit, 
could be used to excellent effect...relatively inexpensively to boot...if only
the machining aspect can be addressed.   

I drill on a stationary press with a fixture that my machinist put me on to. 
Its a simple shop made fixture (not pretty) ,clamped to the drill press' main support shaft.
The fixture holds a removable drill bit bushing which is centered under the bit.  
That means that the bit is supported and stabilized in a very rigid fashion right up 
close and personal to the stock. This stabilizes the bit's tendency to wander and 
gets around any quill travel/clearance issues. (sorry, no digital camera yet!)

So far I've only used this rig to redrill for vertical hitchpins, with very clean and accurate results.
In cast iron I did 2 pass drilling, changing for each hole bits...a bit of a pain, but it was cast iron.

I haven't used it on a block yet, so I'm chewing on the preceedure.     

Jim I