Real affordable quality

This machine has me hooked on Jet tools. I had really thought high quality cost a lot more. Granted it doesn’t have some of the features of it’s PowerMatic cousin (they are made by the same company).

Power: More than enough. I haven’t been able to slow it down facing 6” wide boards.

Reliability: Rock solid, the only issue I have had is with dust collection. As long as you have a dust collector hooked up there is no issue, but if you try to use just the chip chute, it will clog up on facing operations.

Features: The 56” long bed is really nice and stable. The Quick set knives are nice but take some practice setting and really require a dial guage to do so. The blades sit on a cam that is rotated to lift or lower the blade, then locked down. There is a lot of adjustment in them, something like 60-70 thousandths, so it leaves some room for sharpening, however my sharpener didn’t want to do them. There is also a 1/2” rabbeting shelf which I haven’t used.

Drawbacks The “disposable” blades cost $60 per set and my blade sharpening shop won’t re-sharpen them because it then requires you to change the setting on your outfeed table. They don’t like that for some reason. It might help help if you are set up to sharpen them yourself.

Price: I got mine for $400 when it was first released. I think I definitely got what I paid for.

Conclusion: Overall I really like this jointer. I was not very experienced in using a jointer and it was pretty forgiving until I nicked the blades. Trying to sharpen then re-set them was something of a hassle. I had to get a dial gauge to do it well enough that I was happy with the result. I had a magnettic blade setter but it really doesn’t work well with this system. That type is generally better with the free floating blades. Despite the blade issue, I will definitely buy Jet again. I am currently looking at their new deluxe Xacta saw.

-- Rob McCune