I agree that the color on the head doesn't represent the true color when it was new. I'll see if I can find a protected area where it would be more representative of what the original color actually was. I wasn't able to produce a photo of the drill press assembled because I had to take the head off to get it into my car for the ride home. And since I already had it apart I decided to do some restoration work on it. The first challenge when I got it home was separating the base from the column, since they were rusted together pretty solidly. I was able to loosen the two set screws that held them together, but still couldn't get the base off. I sprayed the junction of the base and column with a liberal amount of WD-40. Then I put a piece of scrap wood on my garage floor, and turned the post upside down so that the top of the post was resting on the wood while I held the base in my hands at about eye level. I raised it all up into the air and with a reasonable amount of force thrust the column down onto the wood. I didn't want to damage the end of the column, which is why I used the wood. The base still didn't move relative to the column, so I did this several more times until I could detect some movement. I sprayed it again with some more WD-40, got it to move a little more, and then turn it upright again so the base was at my feet. At this point I slid the base down to the point where it had initially been on the column, and then simply rotated the column off. It came out easily, and undamaged. I loaded the column into my lathe. Using more WD-40 and scotchbright pads, I scrubbed the rust off as best I could. See attached photo for this set-up. It worked pretty well. It just required a little elbow grease. I blasted the base to clean it up, and easily removed all of the rust. Now I just need to paint it.
