I am considering a bench top mortising machine. I am a small hobby shop so a small machine should work fine for me. In terms of good-better-best, I am probably looking for a better machine.

I was looking at the Shop Fox mortising machine as it has a feature that I really like - the ability to rotate the head so that I can drill mortises into the ends of rails. This works really well for me when I am building an entry door. I started looking at the reviews and there are a lot of really bad reviews spanning at least 8 years. The reviews are remarkably consistent regarding problems with the Shop Fox quality. Naturally, the leaves me very concerned so I decided more research is in order.

So I am looking for a little input from those of you that have bench top mortising machines. What unit do you have? What pros and cons have you noticed about your machine?

Thank you.