Avey "Heavy Half" Drill Press

Poking around on our favorite auction site to hate, and found this drill press for sale. You don't see the older Avey drills like this one too often.

Avey Drill Press No. 2 | eBay

If I remember correctly, these were known as the "Heavy Half" drill presses. Flat belt driven, these are a toolroom type press. Although not a revered camel back, since these models date to the 1930's I feel safe in saying they qualify as antique.

I have one at the Shop that has been in our possession since the early 1950's at least, and was the "go-to" drill press until I bought a two spindle Avey MA-6 from a scrap yard in 1992.

These are nice little drill presses, and very well built. With the dovetailed ball-bearing spindle and table, these are accurate machines. There is nothing frail or sloppy about them. For decades, we used ours for drilling and reaming of parts held in fixtures and jigs.

Price is too high in my estimation, but the feller may come down.

Located in New London, Ohio. No relation to seller, etc.

To give an idea of the size of this press, see the attached photo of "Drill Press Row" at my shop. The old "Heavy Half" is the last one, and is the same as the one for sale.

The Avey is a nice example of a sliding head drill. It was made by the Cincinnati Pulley company in Cincinnati, Ohio.
An early example shown below is the Avey No.1 drill that was introduced in 1910 and equipped with ball bearings.
Innovation of machine tools was key to surviving the post war slowdown in machine tool purchases.
In 1920 Cincinnati Pulley brought out the Avey Automatic drilling machine that could be used in three modes.
Automatic, semi-automatic, and hand feed for drilling and reaming.



John