Lately I had gotten the "hots" for a bench mortiser. I have been using a horizontal router table that I have set up to make mortises in both pieces of wood and then cutting a blind floating tenon to fit. The problem with that set up however is that you wind up with rounded ends which means you have to round off your tenons too unless you do the hand work with a chisel. I guess what really got me wanting the bench mortiser is watching Norm on the tube. I started reading the ads and that week came my American Woodworker mag with a review of test of the same. Their conclusion was that the Delta was the Volvo of bench top mortisers. That did it. I found the lowest street price which was with Eagle America and ordered it with a set of 4 different mortising chisels and bits. The machine came in about 4 days and couldn't wait to get it home to set up. First it was very heavy. It has lots of clean ground cast iron in the structure and the main gear. The parts assembled like a charm, about an hour, and mounted it to my bench. Wow, it really looks neat too. I have been using the 1/4" size so far and the openings come out very clean. The slower speed of the Delta means no burning the bit. Lots of leverage and a pleasure to use. The same rule that we use for pianos, Get the best you can, applies across the board to everything you buy. I am using it to come up with new design of music storage furniture to supplement my bench making. By the way 3 of my benches sold this month alone which will help financially, losing a lot of work time for the holidays. Do any of you use a bench mortiser? If so what duration of life do the chisels and drills have? James Grebe R.P.T. from St. Louis pianoman@inlink.com "I am a better tuner now than ever before"
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