Well, it took about 12 hours... Why?

Because I used an inexpensive Harbor freight drill press. The wimpiest depth stop. Too much play in the feed handle shaft through the body ( at least 1/32" ). No quill lock. The quill flex adjuster on the side is keyed to the quill and cannot be turned to use as a quill lock without some serious alteration.

I actually ended up raising the table to do the milling instead of lowering the quill. This required a lot of double checking and weird ways of measuring how deep I was cutting.

The table is some form of stamped steel that was quickly belt sanded and not allowed to cool while it was being sanded. This resulted in a table that was warped and uneven. Requiring a couple of hours of sanding with an aluminum backed machinists sander to make it flat.

So, all things considered, I ended up with what I think is a decent receiver. The shelf is .006" deeper than the gauge on the jig calls for. Mine is .631" instead of the .625" the gauge calls for, so we'll see how it goes together tomorrow.

The moral? Get a decent drill press. With a good cast iron table, an external depth stop and a good quill lock...