Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

First, let me say that I purchased this item directly from Cutech because it is a bit cheaper than on Amazon (<$300). I've been woodworking many years and have had both benchtop and larger floor jointers in my shop during this time. I was initially looking at (and trying to save up for) a 12" combo planer/jointer from Jet (~2K) to replace a Dewalt 735 planer and an old 8" Jet floor jointer both with standard flat blades. While researching an upgrade for the planer (changing it to a helical planer) I happened to stumble across the Cutech line - very happy that I did! The Cutech machines are of the "Spiral" cutting type NOT a true helical (Not as many inserts as a true helical, but still does a fantastic job!). This is a benchtop model (wish they made a floor model) and as such has a smaller table than most floor models but about the same as most other benchtop units - 30 inch table and a ~20 inch fence. After finding this line I tried to do some research on the unit but this turned out to be extremely difficult. Finding reviews that are all but non-existent with even fewer close by users to get first hand info from. I did find one person that said he saw a Cutech planer in a demo and thought it looked like a "good" machine for the money (This kind of review usually makes me run the other way) so I was "forced" to actually contact the company. I called Cutech and spoke with a very knowledgeable sales person that wanted to make sure I was getting what I needed rather than just making the sale - very refreshing! He went over the advantages AND disadvantages of this machine (and the 40200 planer I also ordered - see review on Amazon) with the primary disadvantage for me being size of table and fence - not as stable when jointing longer boards (more on this later). Weighing this information I decided to take a “leap of faith” and purchase both this jointer and the 40200 planer. Initial thoughts: Received both units in two business days using standard shipping – WOW!! Both units were very well packed. When I received the units I expected it would take an hour or so putting the jointer together and getting it coplanar but I was wrong. I removed the unit from the molded “thick” packing material, cleaned off the packing grease and waxed the table then attached the dust collection port and fence - made a slight adjustment to the 90 and 135 degree fence stop (using supplied tool adjusted the two “set screws”) you will need to have a good square and 135 degree angle guide to adjust – I used my digital saw blade angle meter for this. Checked the table and was pleasantly surprised that the table was spot on – they also include a tool to adjust the table. All together this may have taken 20 minutes. Operation: I ran 100-150 feet of rough 12/4 soft and hard woods through the machine (4 & 6” width and 4-8 feet long) as well as a green red oak 4” plank about 40” long. The first couple of dry boards I did NOT use a dust collector to see how it would handle the waste – although the unit didn’t get clogged up I would highly recommend hooking up at least a good shop vac to the unit as the machine was really pushing out a lot of waste material that was pushed out in “clumps” rather than a continuous stream. Hooking up to my DC system removed almost all of the waste as it was being produced and eliminated the “clumping”. The 4’ boards worked very nicely with the table and fence both in the edge and face jointing mode. The longer boards got unstable results so I threw together an extender table and fence extension out of some laminated MDF I had laying around and this made everything very stable. All of the boards (both edge and face) jointed smooth and crisp with a baby bottom smooth finish – it took 2-3 passes at ~1/16-1/8 cut to remove the roughness from the boards and this unit worked flawlessly never bogging down and all but asking for more. The unit is very quiet for a jointer – although I would NOT recommend it, you could probably get away without using hearing protection * Again I would NOT recommend this! The unit also comes with two push pads – not the best or the worst I’ve ever seen but they do work as well as a normal grout float. Summary: This unit is a “benchtop” unit and as with other benchtop jointers they will inherently, out of the box, have issues with longer boards (until you fabricate some extensions as I mentioned above). Time will tell how long the HSS inserts will last but after all the boards I sent through I didn’t see any difference in cut quality from the first board to the last one. Overall, I would highly recommend this unit for anyone that has a small shop and needs a jointer that will handle up to 6” width material. If I were to subtract any stars from this review it would be because the company doesn’t make a floor model and doesn’t make anything bigger than 6” (Minus 1/10th of a star!) Great Machine!!