Torquata Easy Riser Drill Press Upgrade — and the Amazon Alternative
Torquata is Timbecon's own brand, sold direct. A drill press table with a fence and stop block solves the same problem.
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Torquata is the house brand of Timbecon, an Australian woodworking supplier, and its products are sold direct rather than through Amazon. If you want the Easy Riser specifically, timbecon.com.au is where it lives.
The problem it addresses is worth explaining, because most people do not upgrade a drill press table until they see what it fixes.
Three things a bare cast table does badly
It has a hole in the middle. Drill through a workpiece over that hole and the bit exits into fresh air, splintering the underside. A wooden table with a sacrificial insert backs the cut.
It has no fence. Every hole’s distance from the edge is set by eye or by clamping something down. A fence sets it once.
It is small. Anything longer than about 300 mm overhangs and has to be supported by hand, which is how holes end up drilled at a slight angle.
An auxiliary table with a fence and a stop block fixes all three, and it costs less than a decent drill bit set.
The trade-off nobody mentions
Every millimetre of table thickness is a millimetre of quill travel you no longer have. On a full-size floor-standing press that is irrelevant. On a small benchtop machine with 50 mm of stroke, a thick table can leave you unable to drill through a piece of 2x4.
Measure your travel before buying, and consider mounting the table so it can come off quickly.
Fitting
Most auxiliary tables bolt through the existing cast table’s slots, and most drill presses are slightly different. Expect to drill the table to match your machine rather than finding it pre-drilled, and check the whole assembly for flatness and square to the quill once it is on.
What works
- A flat auxiliary table with a fence turns a drill press from a hole-maker into a repeatable machine — the same hole, the same distance from the edge, every time
- The replaceable insert under the bit backs the exit of the hole, which is what stops tear-out on the underside
- A stop block makes a row of evenly spaced holes a matter of sliding the work along, with no measuring after the first
What doesn't
- It raises the work surface, so you lose that much travel under the quill — on a benchtop press with limited stroke that is a real cost
- Bolting it to a small cast table takes some drilling and fettling, and the fit varies by machine
- MDF-cored tables sag over time if the machine lives somewhere damp