WEN 43013 5-Amp Cast Iron Bench Mortiser with 4-Piece Chisel Bit Set - Perfect for Woodworking, Furniture Making & DIY Projects

Starting off, I like WEN tools. I have two sanders and am thoroughly satisfied with them. Well made and a decent price. I saw good and bad reviews for the mortiser and took a chance. I needed it for a woodworking project that needed square holes. It was easy to put together as it's mostly assembled when you take it out of the box. Wear gloves when you take it out of the box as it's covered in grease that you need to clean off. It's also very heavy for a benchtop tool at about 60 lbs (27.2 kg).Once assembled, I found that the fence was not square to the mortise. There doesn't seem to be a way to fix this. Turns out that this isn't really a problem as the square chisel that fits around the auger-bit just has to be aligned with the fence, no matter the angle. Squaring the chisel/auger-bit can be tricky as the instruction only say to align it with the marks you make on the wood. I found aligning the chisel with the fence made multiple cuts much easier.The hold down didn't quite work as I would have liked. It didn't efficiently hold the wood in place while mortising. I had to use a crafting stick (an oversized popsicle stick) between the hold down and the wood so it would stay in place. The wood still creeped around but I was able to work around that.I practiced on pine to make sure I got everything right and things went well. The pine was easy to cut, the holes were square and I switched to oak for my project. I was a little worried as some reviews said that going through oak was very difficult. I found it took a bit more force but the chisel and auger went through the oak very well. It only took a little bit more force than the pine and I was able to do eight 1"X1-1/2" holes reasonably quickly. All holes came out the same and the machine performed the same on each hole (no bogging down, no wood burning, no motor overheating and accuracy was good.)I did experience some blow out on my first hole as I used the experimental pine as a backer and I went through an experimental hole. The chisel and auger are aggressive so be sure to use a backer. The auger is very efficient at clearing wood shavings but you should probably still give it a hand and lift up out of the hole occasionally.NOTE: The instructions say to be very careful when installing or just being around the chisel/auger because it's very sharp. This is so true. Obviously you have the machine off when moving or adding wood and you may have to reach under the chisel/auger when doing that. If you lightly brush your hand or finger against it, you will bleed. I was being extremely careful and I got several cuts on the back of one hand when adjusting wood. Totally my fault, just giving you a heads-up.Overall, I think this a good value for the money. The machine is well put together (except for the misaligned fence,) it operates as expected and the results are what you want. Not sure how it would go in the long run but I'm a hobby woodworker and I would expect it to last a while.