Slot Mortiser

[Joe Powers]

My woodworking school is looking to buy a slot mortiser. We are obviously on a budget but I'd rather spend $2000 once than $1000 twice. Can anyone recommend features and models to look for. Any advice on what upgrades we could expect at higher price levels would be helpful.

-- Joe

[Chris Parks]

Festool Domino. It is within the budget and far more versatile.

[Alan Turner]

Joe,
Good luck on this quest. At PFW we have a Griggio HSM from about 1980 or so and it is the old style, where the table is XYZ and the head is fixed. Later, Griggio went to a fixed table with moving head which is a better design. Ours is fine for smaller pieces, but for long pieces, such as entry door stiles, the leverage on the table is quite substantial and accuracy is sacrificed. It takes two people to mortise the ends of long boards.
Another feature you will want to look for is a tilting table, for chair work and the like. Ours is fixed, so angled mortises require some jigging.
You might want to take a look at the Invicta. I seem to recall it is in the $2700 range, but I have never seen or used one. It is tough to find a used HSM of any quality.
It may be the case that the Felder has the correct features, but I think that the price is around $5000, and that may be the price that needs to be paid for a good quality machine.
It would seem to me that a tool manufacturing company could make a pretty good HSM for a less, and that there is a substantial market for this tool. But, none seem to have had an interest. I wonder if Steel City might have such a tool on its drawing board.

Good luck. It is a wonderful tool; quick and accurate.

[Bernhard Lampert]

I have a Felder FD250 horizontal slot mortiser. I think I paid around $2600 for the machine. It is a fixed table/movable motor machine. Nicely build, absolutely no slop in the ways.

Cheers,
Bernhard