I Delta Tool Boxes

Review by The Dude : This Item was never 1000 dollars. Ever!

First I would like to say that this Jig was never a 1000 Dollars in retail stores. Don't fall for the imagined savings that is pure bull crap. (Kind of like some moron charging $1000 for a Red stapler that has just come out that Staples or others are selling for $13 to $19.) However the Jig is very good. It does take some effort to get things dialed in and some practice using it. To me that was half the fun. I found some use for all that scrap wood I had laying around. Also for the guy who asked if this item is being discontinued the answer is: No, it is not being discontinued. I was thinking of buying the Leigh dove tail jig for about 100 bucks more than this one but after having a chance to look at the two I made a personal decision to go with the porter cable. Mostly because of changing out the templates. I bought mine from a Woodcraft store. I believe you can find them closer to the $500 - $549 range now in local woodshops.

Review by John : Well designed, but manufacturing process only average

I've had a chance to cut a few joints with this and find it acceptable. I enjoy the design, the heavy aluminum. Machined surfaces in some places. Lots of easy to make adjustments to fine-tune the joint. After tweaking some mis-alignments, it is cutting nice joints. Things I don't like: 1. The front face wasn't 90 degrees to the top face. Easily corrected, but not documented. Remove the three cover plates on the front piece and you will find locking screws. The locking screws are really tight. Once loosened, the front piece will rotate. 2. The support bars weren't parallel to the top face. I had to shim the back of each. Warning: the screws holding them are loc-tited. 3. Probably my biggest complaint is the pin-fingers are higher than the out-board support. This causes the router the hand up as it moves from finger to finger (I cut widely-spaced pins). Low-tech, but I put wooden coffee stir-sticks under each side of the out-board support to shim it up. 4. If you cut widely-spaced pins, the router isn't supported between finger-pins. 1/8" spacers between the finger-pins provides the necessary support. 5. The finger-board wants to move as it is tightened down. One side wants to pull close to the stop, the other wants to pull away. Result of right-hand threads on the clamp knobs. Things I like: 1. Very easy to fine-tune the joint. Micrometer adjustments in the right places. 2. Intuitive to use. After you have cut a few joints! A little intimidating at first. 3. The base is extremely well made. Heavy aluminum, machined sufaces. 4. The out-board support is very stable. There is a feeling of solid support as you move the router around. Summary: If you treat your tools as kits, which need to be finished, this is for you. This isn't the right tool if you just want to cut dovetails out of the box. The Akeda (which I haven't used) may be better. John

Review by Sylvius : Awesome after some tweaking

So I did have to do some tweaking to get it dialed in for depth, etc (when have you bought a tool that didn't need a little fine tuning out of the box?), but now that it's done I love this jig. It is very heavy duty with nice machining of all parts. The depth pod and stop sets are such a cool way of giving fast repeatability to go back and forth among different set ups. Plus, all the stickers on the jig walk you through the set up for any of the joints. Finally, it comes with a really well written manual plus a DVD with Norm. What more could you ask for? I am really happy with it and can't see needing another DT jig.