Bring your drill-press crank to the forefront

The crank on some drill-press tables swings close enough to the table that you risk a good knuckle-banging with every rotation, especially when making large adjustments. To avoid that, I bought a low-cost trailer jack and mounted it upside down on the drill-press column, as shown. The jack provides more than 12" of adjustment.

My older-style drill press never had a built-in crank handle, but if yours does, remove the rack side of the gear mechanism. Then, remove the jack's wheel and substitute a wood block that conforms to the bottom of the table support. Make the column-mounting blocks by boring a hole that matches the diameter of the drill-press column into a short length of 2×6. Bandsaw the 2×6 in half to yield the two blocks.
—Joe Eide, Eau Claire, Wis.