Side by Side Comparison of: Central Machinery vs Woodstock

very good

Perfect

this item is excellenteand the support it's wonderful

Performed exactly as expected!

Great quality, very well made!

Really handy for cutting square holes!

The chisel works very good. Thanks

Price was right, this machine isn't for production purposes, but good for light duty in the home shop -

good quality

Great Chisel for mortising. Have no issues with this chisel whatsoever. Does get clogged up at times, so have to go slower at times, but fits nicely into the square notches. Nice and tight corners. Saves from having to clean out the corners with a hand chisel.

I returned it as its shank is too short to fit into my Powermatic Mortiser 701. It is about 3.5", an 1" too short.

Don't expect clean holes out of the box, but with significant re-grinding and sharpening it works okay. I used this with a 1 hp mortise, and it had enough power to make 3/4" mortises.

Bought one of these directly from harbor freight a while back. Desperately needed a mortising machine for sashmaking and furniture projects.Above all, this tool is *barely* serviceable. If you make some jigs and show a lot of patience you can make some acceptable mortises - not for furniture grade through-tenon work, but acceptable for blind tenons and places that nobody will ever see.As previously noted, the biggest problem is that the fence is junk. It's weak cast aluminum with a sloppy and awkward adjuster. The table is a piece of MDF with a wood-grain sticker on it. It's just garbage. There's no other way to describe it. Loose, wobbly, and ultimately untrustworthy. If that were the only issue, maybe a really good jig or upgrade fence could save this tool......but it's not.The arm is badly designed. On the bench, mine hits the wall behind the bench when fully release. It comes down too far to get good control, It's just awkward.The motor is a bit weak for this wort of work. Making mortises in Fir (which is a softwood) the chisels frequently bind up and get trapped in the piece. I have to turn it off and whack the piece loose.Also, the plunge feature - arguable the most the important part of a tool is loose and imprecise. It's got maybe 1/4" of slop in the precision of the tool. This makes long mortises very difficult.All this said, it's still about half the cost of a good tool and this makes it attainable for folks who don't use such a tool on a regular basis. At best this is for your average hobbyist who needs this tool, but not that badly. Anybody who's serious about mortise and tenon work should steer clear, save another $200 and buy something better.

Only good for drill press that has an attachment for this device. Waited to long to try it so didn't feel right returning it. Also need a floor pedestal press. Not for bench drill presses.

Just bought a shopfox W1671. Searched everywhere for 3/4 mortising chisels. Found a handful of very expensive ones. This one is by far the cheapest I've found, the only one close being the CMT 543.190.51, which is about $10 more. These D2844's are back-ordered for a couple months. I luckily got my hands on 2 of these bits. Yay. Then not-yay. These bits both wobble severely in the chisel creating tons of noise and heat. I tested the bits without the chisels and they both were off-center, which is why they wobble inside the chisel. They were spaced appropriately and set up properly. Within the first couple cuts they were burning the wood so bad it was smoking. Not-yay. So now I get to spend more money searching for a decent and affordable set. Maybe I'll try the CMT's.

I really wish I had spent a few extra bills so I would not have to deal with the hassle of this machine. First and foremost the most annoying thing is that the fence is absolutely terrible. I think I've only been able to use the little hold down that came with this guy ONCE. Every other time for my mortising needs it has been in the way. It really is a bad design. So I have to monkey grip the piece and keep it from moving around with my hands instead.Another thing that pissed me off when I was using this guy is that one of the gears snapped while putting a 3/8" mortise through Cherry. The chisels were sharp and I was being easy on the machine, yet one of the gears snapped while I was using the lever to pull down on it.The motor is also underpowered.I didn't know what I was expecting. The planer and the dust collector by Central Machinery is good....but this guy is absolute junk. Do not buy it and look on spending a little bit more for a better mortiser machine.

Dislike. This was garbage. A waste of my money

Pretty dull...... Would not even cut a mortise in a pine 2x4...... Worthless!