Review on 3/4 HP Heavy-Duty Shop Fox W1671 Mortising Machine by Ryan Dot

The first thing that hit me when the machine arrived was that it weighs 80 pounds, not the 24 listed. I had planned to keep it under the workbench. It has to be sturdily mounted.Next was that the manual shows a picture of the parts. Watch out, there are more, I pondered for a long time trying to figure out how to mount the unit to the base and finally got an idea. I looked through all the parts and found bolts for this.The worst insult was mounting the gas spring. It’s about an eighth of an inch too long. The instructions say to compress it. I couldn’t find anyone strong enough for that, but finally did it with a long wood clamp and hammered the fitting in place. The ball joints for this gas spring seem to require a combination if English and metric wrenches. One had fallen out when I unpacked the unit.Finally, there were two parts left over when I thru. There is a great diagram on the internet. I just found one where I goofed. It’s too bad the manual looks so good that you think you can use it. They could at least list the parts.On the other hand, The unit comes beautifully packaged and greased, but that grease could well cause cancer if enough lab rats were immersed in it long enough and the statistics properly fudged. This thing come from close enough to California for that.