Ellis Walentine
Yeah, I might have mentioned that our mortiser, with those draw collets for all the different diameter end mils, was an old converted Whitney horizontal mill, that we tricked out with a Reeves drive and a thick phenolic table with these nifty hold-down clamps that aren't made anymore. We used only two-flute tool steel end mills, running at pretty slow speeds, and we kept the x axis moving while advancing the bit, so we never needed center cutter mills. The bits held up very well in our most usual timbers -- mahogany, walnut, cherry, maple -- presumably because of the slow speeds.

The few times I used a drill press for this type of work, it was only for occasional one-off jobs.

Ellis