Hi Brian,
Just taken delivery of the very same today
An early birthday present for next week, some consolation in getting older
Had been looking at for a while and noted favourable comments on this particular model in a number of places, mags, forums (including here somewhere I think) as well as customer reviews on the Rutland site itself.
Seeing the price reduction tipped me into making the decision at last.
First impressions having just assembled and tested it:-
a) It's very heavy !!!
b) The instructions, while initially looking fairly good, are actually utter rubbish ! They reference diagrams that are not there, they reference detail on pictures that you cannot see because it is so small or smudged or again not actual on the diagram etc etc extremely tiresome because someone with a half hour to spare could easily improve them to a good level of usefulness. Oh, and they very helpfully encourage you to call their technical support if you have any questions or problems, but there are no phone numbers anywhere in the documentation !!!
c) The chisels and drill bits supplied are metric 6mm, 8mm, 10mm and 12mm not imperial as the Rutlands blurb states. Not a problem for me, but as another customer has already pointed this out on the Rutlands site some time ago, you would have thought they might get round to changing it.
d) It is impossible to adjust the chisel and drill bit to leave the bit protruding by the right amount as advised in the instructions as the drill bits are around 20mm too long and protrude way beyond the bottom of the chisel. Having no Fox contact number called Rutlands who said that it was normal for drill bits to be supplied overlength so that the customer could cut them down to size to suit their particular machine ! I suggested that 1) it would be extremely useful to put an explanation of that somewhere in the documentation and would have saved me a half hour of head scratching and fiddling and a ten minute phone call, and 2) I was not buying after-market supplied chisels/bits, I was buying the machine and surely the supplier should be providing these essential parts suitable to install and use straightaway without the customer having to figure out that he has to butcher his new toy with a hacksaw before he can get to use it ](*,)
Helpful lady is going to get Fox to call me which I guess is good, maybe, but why aren't they going to deal direct with them rather than me spending more time and enegy doing so, Rutlands are the people I paid my money to after all.
e) The base required shimming slightly to ensure the chisel was at 90 degrees to the base, not a major issue and easily fixed.
f) Leaving aside all the Victor Meldrew stuff (exacerbated by being extremely hot in the workshop today), the machine itself, once setup and working, appears to be very good indeed. Very solid and accurate, very quiet in operation, easy to adjust (once you ignore the instructions and use a bit of commensense instead) and had no problem at all cutting accurate deep mortices in some spare bits of hardwood I had lying around.
I don't think the problems I encountered with the instructions and assembly are by anyway unique to this product or manufacturer, and seem to be about par for the course these days, and will be long forgotten about once the machine is being used in anger. So, choose a cool day to assemble it and approach it as a bit of a challenge (like doing a crossword puzzle or something) and I think you will be delighted with the machine at the end of it.
Cheers, Paul
(A bit hot and bothered but happy
!!!)
