karlkuehn
Banned
Hey all, just thought I'd let you know the little issue I found with the Jet mini that I bought from Woodcraft a month and a half ago.
When I first bought it, I also bought a keyless chuck for it as well, but when I got home, the chuck spindle taper wouldn't seat right in the Jet's headstock morse. It acted like the chuck taper was swollen on the back part, and after a trip back to the store and much monkeying, I ended up deciding that the chuck taper was mushroomed at the end where they pressed the little threaded fitting into it, so I simply ground the very end of the taper down a little to solve the problem.
Well, recently I purchased a new adjustable mandrel from Bill at Arizona Silhouette, the new ones that he's got that have the allen grub screw that adjusts the mandrel length instead of the standard two big honkin' nuts that we find on the PSI ones. These mandrels are simply awesome, by the way, **highly recommended!**. Definitely worth the few extra dollars over the PSI stuff.
Well, the new mandrel had a longer taper on it like the drill chuck did (somewheres in the neighborhood of 2 3/4"), and when I shoved it into the Jet headstock, I saw the same seating/bad wobble problem, and thought, "Well, @#%&!". I knew it wasn't the mandrel, it's a fine piece of equipment, so I actually got to looking at the headstock. I had assumed that Jet was quality stuff the first time I ran into this, so it never occurred to me to check the lathe.
Well, lo and behold, looking into the headstock morse taper with a flashlight, I saw that the morse taper on the Jet headstock was drilled all wonky. It's like when they milled the taper, the milling bit wasn't running exactly perpendicular to the headstock, and the Morse taper ended up off-center at the very back, with a wobble that was visible to the naked eye when turning the wheel by hand. It was really bad!
Near as I can tell, the only reason that the lathe ever worked at all was because most of my attachments have short tapers; the drive spur that came with the lathe has a really short taper, so the wobble wasn't noticed when using that, but anything long enough to get back into the funky area of the hole (my new mandrel, drill chuck, etc) would wobble like crazy if you could even get it to seat.
So, I called the guys at Woodcraft and they said bring it in for replacement. I hauled the Jet on down there, and they pulled a new one out after we looked at the problem, and we found the same problem on the new Jet! So, they called Jet, asked about the problem, and got a bit of the runaround; the guy said they hadn't heard anything about it. We also checked the display model they had, same problem there, so that's 3 bad Jets in one store.
We went into the classroom at woodcraft and checked my new mandrel on one of the Jet minis in there, and it worked great. It's an older model without the new indexing head, so I don't know if that had anything to do with it.
Anyhoo...they offered me a couple of options: Grind down the taper on my new mandrel or trade the Jet for the Rikon that they have for the same price as the Jet. Well, I ain't grinding down the beautiful mandrel that I got, so I'm now the proud owner of a Rikon, which is a beast, it's like 20 pounds heavier than the Jet, but it works great so far.
The Rikon's got a little bigger capacity both directions, and the belt-speed change is a much better process. I hated having to open two panels to change the speed on the Jet; with the Rikon, the whole outside of the headstock case tips away for easy access to both pulleys.
I was torn when I bought the Jet, because the Rikon was on sale for $199 at the time, but I've heard so much good about the Jet that I was willing to pay the extra $50 for it. Oops.
So, after 2 trips worth of gas and time back to the store which is 45 minutes away, and paying $250 for the Jet instead of $200 for the Rikon a month and a half ago, I now own a $300 Rikon, and I'm finally able to turn some perfect pens! I was getting worried that I'd lost my touch for a while with all the weird wobblies I've been getting on the Jet.
I know that Jet has some loyal fans out there, but I'll never buy another Jet tool. To me, quality control is a big part of building a good tool, and for someone to miss that bad taper on 3 machines tells me that Jet is not on the ball. Time is money to me, and I've wasted a good amount of it so far just to enjoy a new lathe.
When I first bought it, I also bought a keyless chuck for it as well, but when I got home, the chuck spindle taper wouldn't seat right in the Jet's headstock morse. It acted like the chuck taper was swollen on the back part, and after a trip back to the store and much monkeying, I ended up deciding that the chuck taper was mushroomed at the end where they pressed the little threaded fitting into it, so I simply ground the very end of the taper down a little to solve the problem.
Well, recently I purchased a new adjustable mandrel from Bill at Arizona Silhouette, the new ones that he's got that have the allen grub screw that adjusts the mandrel length instead of the standard two big honkin' nuts that we find on the PSI ones. These mandrels are simply awesome, by the way, **highly recommended!**. Definitely worth the few extra dollars over the PSI stuff.
Well, the new mandrel had a longer taper on it like the drill chuck did (somewheres in the neighborhood of 2 3/4"), and when I shoved it into the Jet headstock, I saw the same seating/bad wobble problem, and thought, "Well, @#%&!". I knew it wasn't the mandrel, it's a fine piece of equipment, so I actually got to looking at the headstock. I had assumed that Jet was quality stuff the first time I ran into this, so it never occurred to me to check the lathe.
Well, lo and behold, looking into the headstock morse taper with a flashlight, I saw that the morse taper on the Jet headstock was drilled all wonky. It's like when they milled the taper, the milling bit wasn't running exactly perpendicular to the headstock, and the Morse taper ended up off-center at the very back, with a wobble that was visible to the naked eye when turning the wheel by hand. It was really bad!
Near as I can tell, the only reason that the lathe ever worked at all was because most of my attachments have short tapers; the drive spur that came with the lathe has a really short taper, so the wobble wasn't noticed when using that, but anything long enough to get back into the funky area of the hole (my new mandrel, drill chuck, etc) would wobble like crazy if you could even get it to seat.
So, I called the guys at Woodcraft and they said bring it in for replacement. I hauled the Jet on down there, and they pulled a new one out after we looked at the problem, and we found the same problem on the new Jet! So, they called Jet, asked about the problem, and got a bit of the runaround; the guy said they hadn't heard anything about it. We also checked the display model they had, same problem there, so that's 3 bad Jets in one store.
We went into the classroom at woodcraft and checked my new mandrel on one of the Jet minis in there, and it worked great. It's an older model without the new indexing head, so I don't know if that had anything to do with it.
Anyhoo...they offered me a couple of options: Grind down the taper on my new mandrel or trade the Jet for the Rikon that they have for the same price as the Jet. Well, I ain't grinding down the beautiful mandrel that I got, so I'm now the proud owner of a Rikon, which is a beast, it's like 20 pounds heavier than the Jet, but it works great so far.
The Rikon's got a little bigger capacity both directions, and the belt-speed change is a much better process. I hated having to open two panels to change the speed on the Jet; with the Rikon, the whole outside of the headstock case tips away for easy access to both pulleys.
I was torn when I bought the Jet, because the Rikon was on sale for $199 at the time, but I've heard so much good about the Jet that I was willing to pay the extra $50 for it. Oops.
So, after 2 trips worth of gas and time back to the store which is 45 minutes away, and paying $250 for the Jet instead of $200 for the Rikon a month and a half ago, I now own a $300 Rikon, and I'm finally able to turn some perfect pens! I was getting worried that I'd lost my touch for a while with all the weird wobblies I've been getting on the Jet.
I know that Jet has some loyal fans out there, but I'll never buy another Jet tool. To me, quality control is a big part of building a good tool, and for someone to miss that bad taper on 3 machines tells me that Jet is not on the ball. Time is money to me, and I've wasted a good amount of it so far just to enjoy a new lathe.
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