Sunnybob: the grandchildren have evidently made you stir-crazy!
I really, really wouldn't do that 'radial' thing!
You'll hardly ever need the extra reach. You'll hardly ever tilt the table. You'll NEVER want to tilt the head. Ever.
But you'll always curse the thing when it slips out of square because something worked loose. It might even be top heavy, in which case I can imagine it tipping over suddenly when least expected. Life is way too short.
The most important thing we all need from any drill press is clean SQUARE holes, accurately* in the right place.
You can get bench-top presses s/h from the local paper, or auctions, or Gumtree, or even eBay if really desperate.
Something from a school would be good - they usually bought decent quality in the first place.
Check when you buy. They're not complicated mechanisms, and it's easy to hear if the bearings are bad, or find something odd when you raise/lower the quill. Take a small square; check for squareness and a small drill bit to check it runs true.
For wood, slow speeds are more useful than very fast ones (we rarely drill really small holes), and you don't need a lot of different speeds - something a machinist would snort at would probably do fine. You can improve many drill presses simply by fitting a decent chuck with a M2 Morse taper adaptor (they're usually M2 in the quill). Cost: less than 20 quid all in. I have three chucks, to suit different sizes of drill bit - they only take seconds to change.
The one luxury I'd go for is a work light, either built in or added (Ikea have gooseneck work lights for about ten quid, that would do fine).
Three recommended accessories:
1. a small engineer's square to reset the table if can be tilted,
2. a decent hold down clamp or two. Making your own table (with clamps) is better still,
3. a good magnet from an older hard disk (the older, the stronger the magnets!), to keep the chuck key on the side of the head where it belongs.
Finally, the really old hand-powered presses are usually good quality, and even cheaper than anything mains powered.
I bet you'll find something this autumn, at a fraction of new price, that does you proud for years.
E.
*Accuracy is what we think is accurate. People argue about this, but "good enough for me" is good enough.
