Anyone have a Delta JT160 Benchtop Jointer

[ke4rdb]

Anyone have a Delta JT160 Benchtop Jointer. I just bought one other than being small (and cheap $199.00) it seems to have a lot of power and doesn't do to bad a job. I bought it due to price (all I could afford right now). The fence and fence adjustments are not great but I plan on setting it and not changing other than to readjust if needed.

I quess what I'm asking is do you all think of this tool?
James

[Stormbringer]

James,

Do a search for it here. I believe there have been numerous comments about (about a year ago) when the Tradesman model went on sale at Lowes for $147 then $126 then $99. Discussion ensued since these two are in the same league.

Also, a past issue of ShopNotes did an article of how to mount bed extensions and I believe they used that jointer as the subject.

Amazon reviews are reasonably positive for the price.

Regards,
Greg

[Russianwolf]

I have one, picked it up on sale a good while back.

I'm happy with the little critter. As long as you take care you can edge most anything on it. I do alot of work on 4foot boards and have no problem. Longer boards are harder to control.

[LCHIEN]

I had that jointer before they went to the Shopmaster designation JT-160, I think it was the 22-037 or 22-070 or something like that.
Anyway, it was a nice little jointer, it did a fairly nice job of planing and jointing, I could not fault the finish of the cuts. but its big shortcoming was the short bed, I could not make a long (> 6 ft) piece of wood straight.

I did buy a new JT360 with a 46" bed for $255 after a couple of rebates and a coupon from lowes, but I think the promo ended May 31.
It was listed in the Bargains forum back around march or April or so.

I sold my JT160/22-037 for $150, locally.

[Boomer_01]

I have one

I bought mine about 3 months ago. I don’t have room in my shop for a larger bed jointer so I try to get by with this smaller unit. It does a pretty good job on shorter length stock, gets a lot more interesting with boards over 5' long.

I am working on a blanket chest for my granddaughter and had to edge joint about 25 rough cut pieces of 13/16" walnut that my supplier had sort of straightened on one edge. The pieces varied from 18" to 48" in length. The jointer did a fair job, though I had to do some hand work on the edge jointed pieces before I did the glue ups of the carcass sides and top to get the edge seams as tight as possible.

I am not sure if the problem was my technique or the jointer, but I couldn’t get the edges as true as I wanted on the jointer alone, but with my smoothing plane and some time I finally got acceptably tight fit ups.

All in all I think it’s a pretty good machine for a small shop. If I ever get any more room I will keep it for small work and buy a larger machine for larger stock.



Boomer