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I suppose it's a poor workman that blames his tools, but I find it quite difficult to make consistent cuts with this tool.
Move over Norm, I have at least ONE of your Yankee workshop gadgets now. I've made a few bookcases using screw fasteners, and wanted to clean up the connections. This thing is the cat's meow. :-) Its simple to use and works great.
I just drilled and tapped two holes on the face of the fence opposite the existing tightening lever and put in a set screw in each and now no slippage. I too made the mistake of buying this tool. The annoying noise and the dust collection system I can live with but the slipping fence is totally unacceptable. One hole probably would have worked just fine but the aluminum fence is soft and doing two holes was no problem so what the heck. I did do a quick fix to the fence which worked and the rating jumped from a 1 star to 3.
The most irritating thing about this tool is the fence. The other irritating feature about this biscuit joiner is the sound the motor makes. If you are able to achieve a square fence adjustment and you have just about stripped the screw to get the fence to stay in place; after 2 biscuit slots being cut, it will start slipping on you. Even with those nice features, this tool causes a LOT of aggravation. This biscuit joiner has a lot going for it.
It doesn't take much pressure at all to get it to slip, either. Inexpensive price tag, nice blade, fairly stable base for biscuit jointing smaller stock (NOT requiring the adjustable fence). It uses a single screw on the side to create enough pressure to hold the adjustable fence in place. I would spring for the Porter Cable or DeWalt joiners. There is a flaw to this simple system -- IT DOESN'T WORK.
As other reviewers have pointed out in their colorful fashion, the 2 main failure points of this tool in my opinion are: 1. While it is probably there for strength, it catches the shavings and proceeds to completely block the chute every time. Worked fine with no slippage. I solved this one with a rotary tool and cut the baffle out and it works fine now. Very dissapointing. Cutting red oak, ash, and cherry with the bag *OFF* allowing material to free flow (since it was plugging up with the bag on) the unit would only get through 1-2 cuts without jamming up. This time really reefing the fence lock down. There is no easy solution I can see for the fence problem.
Save your coins a little longer and buy the Porter Cable. While trying to buscuit boards for a table top, the fence (which I thought I had tightened to the point of near over tightening) gradually slipped across 7 buiscuits, each cutting at it's own special height. Almost since the moment this thing came out of the box, I wished I had spent the extra money to get the Porter Cable 557. So I re-aligned it and tried again on scrap. Slipped again.
The other more minor complaints like the noise and ergonomics are minor compared to these major problems. The problem was a baffle in the middle of the dust port. The fence very poorly designed. Thrird time I used some channel locks for leverage to tighten the fence. Just don't buy the PC biscuits for either machine as they have over a 40% failure in the batch of 1000 I just bought.
#2 problem: The dust port (as mentioned in other reviews also) is awful.
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