Soo....
The day i have always dreaded is here.
It broke again today.
I couple years ago it had a problem where the gears that lift the table up and down stripped. They are just plastic, so i could see why.
But again, for the past few months, the table was harder and harder to move. I would have to pull as hard as i could to move it up and down. And yesterday, it snapped again. I havnt taken it apart to look at it, but i can see that the gear isnt spinning. It looks like it stripped off of the bar that they handle turns.
Turns out, there are no more replacement parts availible for this. I had ordered them last time, and the same siite now says that it is "obsolete" for those parts. They sell most other replacement parts but the ones that always break....
This is probably the one tool i do NOT ever want to build a guitar without again.
With the ribbon grained mahogany i use, i always get a lot of tearout with the planer i use. There is no way i can level and remove all the tearout by hand. I did it for years and it just isnt worth it.