Okay, I know that at 30" it can't do a really good job, but I just don't have room in my "shop" for real equipment.
That said, is it well made for what it is? About 2/3rds of the reviews on Amazon love it; the rest say it is worthless trash.
I have an even smaller benchtop jointer. It works fine. But . . .
Keep the knives sharp, clean and make every effort to set the knives perfectly. Keep the feed rate modest and don't everload the motor. Don't expect "production" type throughput when face jointing 5 or 6 inch widths. Do all your feeding over the outfeed table once the cut is started, avoiding pressure directly over the cutter head. Keep the cuts shallow and make more passes.
If this machine has a parallelogram type infeed table you may have to spend some time making some very fine leveling adjustments on the screws that true the infeed table mechanism (for instance, if these screws are 1/4-20 the final adjustments may be the smallest turn that you can make with the allen wrench or screwdriver - but that will be the difference between cutting a great joint or a cove or arc). I think that because the castings that go into these home shop tools my not be very well aged before they are ground and machined that they may change slightly after you have owned the tool for a while (I have heard this many times regarding home-shop and contractor's saws). And because of what we pay for these tools we shouldn't expect "milling machine" type fit and dimensions in them either. My guess is because of this, if the infeed/outfeed alignment is good at zero cut, it may remain good only through minor changes - i.e. as you lower the infeed table to greater and greater cut depths the error will get worse and worse.
My little jointer (smaller than the one you describe) will make beautiful 8 foot joints using shallow cuts (say 1/32"). How long do you need and how fast do you have to go?
Tim
Not a bad machine, and if all you can afford, that small machine is heads and shoulders better than none
John
I bought one about a month ago and it does great for the size of it. I've used it for edge jointing only and used it on oak and pine. I took the min. cut depth and fed it slow. I had a couple of pieces that were slightly bowed and I fed just the ends in for a few passes till it was down closer to the center then jointed the whole board. It's not a big jointer and I don't expect it to perform like one. Mike S.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.