A little premature to gloat but I have put a deposit on a Laguna Horizontal Slot Mortiser scheduled to arrive in late March. Apparently the first shipment for early march is already sold. Had a very honest conversation with the sales rep about its capabilities vrs the more expensive european models, seems it will do what I need assuming the machine is weighted and/or bolted to the floor. Weight is 270# which is a little light over all, he said some guys have put steel plates under the base, others have used sand bags!
I have access to 8" square tubular steel and a welder, I may just have a more stout base fabricated. I'm figuring for $1K, the XYZ table, motor and chuck alone are worth the price of admission. We'll see.
My sales rep specializes in Latin American markets (I am in new England, apparently yankee ingenuity is strongly rivaled by Latin American rescourcefulness). He said Laguna machines tend to be a hard sell south of the border where many woodworkers fabricate their own stuff. He described among other things one highly accurate band mill/mortiser set up that was made from an old VW bug! No OSHA in Mexico.
Any specific suggestions for tooling would be appreciated. I have searched onsrud, schmidt, amana and freud as well as other Horz mortiser dealers sites and am confused as to which types of cutters are appropriate for slotting at 2800 rpms.
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