The best machine experience

[jong]

I've been upgrading my workshop over the past few months.

• Makita router, great except for the collet which I hate. Hard to get the bit out, hard to get the bit in.
• Router table, needed to make it, took me 3 weekends.
• Makita Table saw was not too bad, just needed a new blade and a stand made for it and as always there was slop in the mitre gauge that it came with.
• Incra fence and mitre gauge, needed ridiculous amounts of shimming. The two parts of the super fence is still not straight and no amount of shimming will fix the mitre gauge because it is vertically concave.
• Festool saw and guide rail, just needed to cut the zero clearance plastic and it was all set.
• Almost given up on finding a replacement for my drill press, not only has there been no real innovation in this area but the range has actually shrunk. Almost everyone just sell the chinese made ones. I would love to see a company like Festool make one just so that others can copy it In the mean time I'm looking at the Jet.
• Repeat the above and replace drill press with dust collector. I think it would be interesting if Dyson ever makes a industrial model, bigger container less attachments.

By far the best experience (and the cheapest) I've had with a machine recently though was sadly not in woodworking, it was a sewing machine, perfect ready to go out of the box.

[rrich]

Just a suggestion on the router collet / bit problem.

Take the collet retaining nut off and remove the collet itself. Lubricate the inside of the shaft that holds the collet using a bit of paraffin wax. (Candle or canning wax) It doesn't take much wax. This will allow the collet to slip in and out as the retaining nut is loosened and make it easy to remove the router bit.