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The Delta JT160 is 30th among 71 in the Jointers pecking order. It is 18th among 36 6" Jointers. At $1713.94, the Delta JT160 Shopmaster Bench Top Jointer (6") is fourth in Jointers and second among 6" Jointers at $519.41. It is ranked 48th of 108 for Delta.

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The Delta 37-070K has very similar products in our product database. Click on the model in the table for more information and reviews.

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Locate more information on Delta products here. www.deltamachinery.com, the manufacturer's site, is a source for manuals, parts, and other information.

I bought this unit about 8 months ago from Lowe's.

I was hoping for a cheap jointer that took up little space that I could use for small woodworking projects.

Assembly was simple and took maybe 15 minutes. The unit seemed solid and pretty well made at first glance.

Part of the assembly in the instruction manual was to square the fence using a small square. That's where the fun started for me.

I found that no matter what I did, I was unable to square the fence. I'd get it square on the infeed table and it would be out of square at the outfeed table. After some frustration and trying to adjust the brackets, I decided to completely remove the aluminum fence and check it for true.

I laid it flat on my table saw and was able to rock it diagonally. This tells me that the fence was twisted - and not just a tiny bit either.

With the fence and guard out of the way, I began examining the tables and the blade. I started by checking to see if the blades were level with the outfeed table. They were not. I was able to adjust them following the instructions in the manual.

I decided I did not like the factory fence and was going to make my own out of some oak. I put the factory fence and guard back on and began face jointing the piece of oak for my new homemade fence when I noticed something odd: The board was getting exceedingly thinner on one side than the other with each pass making a sort of parallelogram out of it. I made multiple passes with the same setting to see if it was my imagination and it was not. The board was beginning to look like a long, skinny wedge. The jointer was removing more stock towards the fence than it was towards the front of the machine.

I took the fence and guard back off and unplugged the unit. I moved the cutter head to get the blades out of the way and started to raise the infeed. Using a straight edge, I adjusted the infeed table until it was perfectly level with the outfeed table. I was holding the straight edge across the front of the machine. I then moved the straight edge slowly back towards the back of the machine and the infeed table was now showing to be lower than the outfeed table. I raised the infeed table up slowly until it came into contact with the straight edge and then I noticed that it was still not touching the straight edge at the far end of the infeed table near where you would begin to feed a board through.

The infeed table was completely warped! I saw nothing in the manual about making adjustments for that problem. I thought about taking the four bolts out that hold the table to the machine and seeing if there was a way to shim them or something then I thought better and packaged the unit back up.

I returned it to Lowe's the next day and explained the problem to them. I told them I'd be happy to buy another one as long as I could check it at the store before taking it home. They called someone from the tools department and we went back and opened another unit. We got a metal ruler from the tools section and checked the tables. We found the same problem on the only other unit they had in stock. The guy who was helping me pointed out that they sold a larger model for a little more than $100 more.

I decided to buy that one instead and have left a good review for it: Delta JT360 $369.

I own several other lower-end Delta machines and have had better luck with them. Although, now I am more reluctant to buy any lower end tools from Delta or anyone else. I have also left a bad review for the Delta 28-276 band saw - also lower end available at home centers.

I think Delta has some quality control issues with these cheaper tools that they need to solve before they tarnish their otherwise good name.

This jointer is a gift for someone, have opened it up to check it and plug it in to make sure that the motor runs ,But have not did any work with it , but at this time and what I have seen it... (More)

It's small and it's cheap, which is great if you like small cheap things. It takes a long time to get the fence square, and ultimately you may have to settle for "square enough," because it's... (More)

I also bought this despite reading bad reviews, but I don't mind tinkering to get top performance out of a tool. Here's the surprise - very little tinkering needed. It actually is a well designed and... (More)