The Art Of Repurposing

Something I have been doing my whole life out of necessity and have gotten quite good at.

So, I went down to Harbor Freight over the weekend and snagged a 12 speed benchtop drill press.

I had been scouring Craigslist and watching the sales for two weeks and found some really good deals on Craigslist, until I found out how far away they were.
I'm not driving 100 miles one way to "get a good deal" anymore.
So I did some homework on what it was I could get by with ,what would do the things I figure I want to do, without spending way too much money and getting way too much drill press for the space I have available.
Not my first instinct by any means.

Harbor Freight had a huge sale over Easter weekend and off I went, to return with my plunder.

 

The one thing that this unit doesn't have which irritates me no end is a light mounted on the side so I can see what the heck I am doing. My eyesight is failing rapidly and holding a flashlight in my teeth is not an option.
I mean come on, even their $69.00 cheapie has a freakin' light on it!

The plans are forming in my head before I even get home with the thing.

I get it home, unpack the thing and put it all together, then I start eyeballing it. Pretty soon a plan comes together.

It's not a good picture but you can see where the electrical cables go through the shroud that wind up at the On/Off switch.
That is my target area, now to get a light fixture.

Enter Goodwill.

For $5.00 I found just what I was looking for.

I could turn this Blog post into a tutorial, I took pictures of every step it took to get the light apart, the hole drilled, the layout of the wiring inside the shroud and the actual wiring connections I had to make but it would make this post way too long. Suffice it to say it took me about an hour and a half to get it done.

Let me stop here and put in a disclaimer just for the really stupid people. if you try this at home, make sure the damn thing is unplugged while you are working on it and you have the knowledge to work with electricity safely.

Otherwise buy a drill press with a light on it already.

So here is how it worked out when I got all done with it.

The light bulb is a bit too much, it was what I had laying around. I will probably go down and get something like a refrigerator bulb that isn't so big and won't get too hot.

Not too shabby for a redneck fix though, eh?