Rikon Mortiser Video Review


panofish

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Nice video, Alan. You must have a ton of free time on your hands, that took a lot of work!

 

It looked to me like you could lead your auger bit out of the chisel just a bit more... this may be contributing to the feeling that the mortiser is underpowered.

 

Anyway, thanks for sharing, very cool. :)

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Nice video, Alan. You must have a ton of free time on your hands, that took a lot of work!

 

It looked to me like you could lead your auger bit out of the chisel just a bit more... this may be contributing to the feeling that the mortiser is underpowered.

 

Anyway, thanks for sharing, very cool. :)

 

Perhaps... I'll do some more tests.  I gave it 1/16" as recommended.  The lee valley chisel recommends 1/32" if memory serves.  I didn't show the lee valley chisel in my review, but the results were similar.

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Well done with the video and the amount of extra stuff to try and tweak it. Some good tips in there.

 

I've got a 1/2HP delta bench mortiser and have the woodriver chisels which aren't the greatest of chisels, but they do the job fairly well. I'd loosen the chuck  and let the auger bit out a touch more.

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  • 3 months later...

Your suggestion to use a magnet is genius. 

 

 You can try and tweak this machine as much as you want, but if you only get a few thousands of an inch of run out, that is still easy to work with. frustrating, because its new tool, it should work better, but some things, especially when using a living organic material like wood, are unavoidable. Is it the user, the material, or the machine? Not knocking your talent at all, but it is almost always us as craftsmen who have to strive to compensate for a machines unruliness. The better we get/the more we practice the less stuff like this matters. I have extensively used the powermatic mortiser you mention. The first few projects had the same run-out problems you encountered with the Rikon, even though i must have spent two hours setting it up for absolutely centered mortises and squeak free centering of the bit in the chisel. To this day, No matter how careful I am, I am still unable to get "perfect" results. However, my chisel skills have gotten significantly better, haha.

 

From watching the review of this video I would say the Rikon is a fine tool to get the job done, and the benefit to a more expensive machine would be a more powerful motor that won't burn out if you are using it as a production tool and a larger table with more travel. Having taught at a facility that uses both the jet and the delta bench top mortisers, I would say this is far superior to those options.

 

I like that you didn't subject the viewer to your musical taste... I always find that distracting and it cheeses the whole thing up. very thorough, and well thought out. the stop motion/sounds were not necessary, though well executed and definitely helped demonstrate how the tool is put together out of the box. I would maybe suggest trying to find a way to differentiate your use of this technique from Frank Howarth's to make your videos stand out.

 

happy mortising!

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