OmniGloat

[Eric Haycraft]

My PC 77240 omnijig came today. It is an impressive piece of equipment to say the least. It came in a monsterous 76 pound box mostly assembled and I have spent the past couple of hours in awe of it. Anyway, no sawdust yet, I am still setting it up. I have a leigh superjig, but not a DR4, so I can't make a fair comparison to Leigh's best offerings; however, it makes the superjig look like a toy (again, not apples to apples, so take with a grain of salt).

The manual looks pretty good. 68 pages. It came with three different manuals for three languages. The illustrations look decent too. I'll pop in the dvd soon and check that out.

The fit and finish of this omnijig is impressive. All surfaces nicely machined. Tons of adjustments and the 'router bit depth pod' looks like a very handy addition.
http://lh6.google.com/ejhpics/R7PBVsY8qfI/AAAAAAAAACQ/el6dbhRW-X4/s800/100_0688.JPG

For the pic police:
http://picasaweb.google.com/ejhpics/Woodworking_Public

[Kelly Leblond]

Congrates on the new toy...very nice! Where did you order it from? Thanks!

[Eric Haycraft]

I got it from burns tools. They told me that it would ship on 3/4/2008..Imagine my surprise when I came home to find the UPS man had stopped by.
I paid 499 with free shipping, but burns now lists it for 599 and amazon is even higher. Crazy. But looking at it I can see it fetching 600 bucks - it is that nice.

[Steven Bolton]

What are the fingers made of? Are they identical to the Leigh?

Do you have to buy a bunch of assessories to do things?

Thanks

Steve Bolton

[Mike Heidrick]

PC demo boys at the WW show said out of the box you cut perfect DTs with minimal minimal effort. Please tell us some real world experiences when you get the router out!

[Mike Goetzke]

Wow - from the close-ups looks like a custom machined fixture. The dog's not bad looking either.

Mike

[Eric Haycraft]

What are the fingers made of? Are they identical to the Leigh?

Do you have to buy a bunch of assessories to do things?

Thanks

Steve Bolton

I added a few photos to the picasa gallery with the leigh superjig and PC fingers side by side.


First off, I have a superjig and not a d4r, so I can't compare to Leigh's top offering in person. I know that the fingers are different between the superjig and the d4r and the d4r has longer fingers than the superjig, so keep that in mind.

I think that the omnijig does most everything that the d4r does. However, the d4r can do smaller dovetails out of the box and the PC can work with thicker stock than the d4r. You need a different finger guide (200 bucks) accessory from PC to get to smaller dovetail sizes. Also, I think that you need another accessory to do sliding dovetails, something the superjig does out of the box; however, the PC does tapered sliding dovetails (with an accessory) which I don't believe that the d4r does (something tells me you can do it with the d4r too, but I don't see any info on their website about it)

That said, the fingers differ greatly from the leigh superjig. They are much larger, wider, thicker, etc. Due to the larger fingers, you can't do tiny dovetails out of the box. They also have a nicer locking mechanism that keeps them straighter when tightening them down. Leighs are a simple casting, the PC are a casting (I don't think aluminum) that is machined on the top and bottom. This keeps them well lined up and the surface for the router is very flat and sturdy as a result. They seem to be a sturdier metal than the leighs, but I don't know if that is a plus or a minus. I hit a leigh finger with a spinning router bit and aside from a few swear words, nothing horrible happened. I may have a different reaction with one of these. Also a leigh finger is 6 bucks to replace...something tells me these are substantially more expensive if I ruin one.

The leigh superjig had more fingers and actually appears to have a wider single pass half blind capability ~16 inches compared to ~12 inches. (see pics). I don't think that the d4r shares this wider capacity with the superjig and with both the d4r and superjig full width templates can be purchased for those setups.

Also, the Leigh superjig has roughly a two inch width for keeping the wood aligned horizontally and vertically. Those surfaces are 6 and 5 inches respectively on the PC. Huge difference in heft between these two jigs. You can't really see it from the photos, but the PC's vertical wood support drops below the base of the jig...lots more room to keep the wood aligned perfectly. I have a hell of a time lining things up with the Leigh.

I'll try to wrap this posting up now.. A very short comparison between the two would be that the PC has fewer out of the box features, but is built like a tank. I get the impression that they took every component off of the Leigh and tried to make it 5 times stronger. It is crazy how much this thing weighs. 5 pounds 11.5 OZ for the leigh's finger setup, 13 pounds for the PC.

Alright.. too much writing.. fingers sore.

Eric

[Eric Haycraft]

Router out.. dust flew. I really like this jig. Much easier to keep everything at a 90 degree angle than the superjig. Regarding the perfectly adjusted claim.. Either I did something wrong, or it wasn't. I made some adjustments and got things closer..but not prefect yet. It will definitely take some dialing in, but the nice thing is all of your adjustments are stored due to the pod and the adjustable setup blocks.

[Eric Haycraft]

Its a beast. When the UPS lady said it was over 70 pounds I almost thought she had the wrong package for me. Nope, this thing is massive.

[gary Zimmel]

Eric

Nice looking new toy.

Thanks for the pics and letting us know how the first test drive went.

It will be awhile before we can get them here I bet.

[Dennis Farmer]

Great news Eric
Was a little worried with all the talk of delayed shipping, hopefully mine will be arriving soon. Great photos too Have you been able to locate a source for any of the accesorries.
Tools plus still have them at 499 + 6.50 sh. But you have to go Thur PC web site to get that price (weired)

[Eric Haycraft]

Burns had most of the accessories listed and available for purchase. I came across another site that had it listed for 500 also, so it is good to hear that more than one place is keeping it at that price. After seeing it in person, I think that it is worth 600, but would definitely recommend that people shop around or wait for sales since you can save 100 bucks by being diligent.
Regarding the delays, I think that they generated huge demand for these and they are heavily backordered. I placed my order like a month ago and think that I ended up fairly early in the queue as a result.. They all ship directly from PC, so I imagine it is first come first served no matter where you buy from.