Hi all, pics as promised.
It arrived on a pallet, covered in plywood, with the rails poking out of the top and the fence in a separate cardboard box. All we'll packaged and no damage. When I took off the plywood, this is what I saw:
It's a beast of a motor, and the whole thing weighs a tonne (well, quarter of a tonne, actually), but somehow I managed to get it inside before the sun went down.
The first priority was to get it on wheels. This is an ordinary Aminster one, and it works better than I expected it to, actually. I've abandoned my idea of earlier in the thread, because the dust port is on the right side, not the back as I had assumed, and that would interfere with the mechanism. Pity really, I think that was a goer, otherwise.
This morning my friend came round and helped my put on the table extensions etc. The motor cover is the last to go on, otherwise you can't get your spanner in there.
The rails stretch from here to Derby. I've put them on temporarily, and I can't bring myself to cut them (especially as this is on loan), so I'm off to a steel stockholder on the other side of town tomorrow.
It's against the wall at the mo, just because the rails are so long, but I'll turn it through 90 degrees in use.
Installation was straightforward. Thanks to Alan for warning me about the large amounts of goo. I scraped loads off and still used a ton of WD 40. Smashing surfaces though.
It comes without a cable, but the connection box is easy to get at and the connections inside are substantial.
The blade was in line with the mitre slots, needing no adjustment. The tilt needed a quarter turn on the stop. The fence needed adjustment by a hair vertically and by 0.4mm over its length. All very easy to do. The fence works beautifully, smooth and rock solid. Nice switch. I'd prefer a finer line on the cursor, but the scale itself is clear and in metric and imperial.
Most of the manual is written in a language similar to English, but as there isn't actually much installation to do, it's pretty straightforward. Just don't go searching for the pan-head screws - they are countersunk. The guard is a later model than the manual shows.
Now I know I've been lent this for filming, so I'm not going to say anything which would upset Roy, am I? Actually he was helpful and supportive from the first, and he didn't know who I was then. (It's a good way to be brought down to earth, when one gets tempted to think that I, Steve Maskery, Internationally Renowned Woodworking Superstar, am needed by my Public, by someone who says, "I don't know you from Adam".) So you have to take all this with that caveat in mind. But I can tell you that if I say something is good, it means I think it is good. I'm not going to compromise my personal integrity for anyone else. If I don't like something, I just won't mention it. That's true for anything I say about Festool or JSP, too, for that matter.
In the words of the song, "If you can't say anything real nice, not to talk at all is my advice".
As it happens, as far as I can tell from just installing it, there is very much to like and very little indeed to quibble with. We'll see when we actually come to using it in anger. Yes the cursor could be finer, and the pointer on the mitre fence is a bit far from the scale. But that's about it. I was pleased to discover my best Freud thin-kerf blade works with the riving knife, I thought I was going to have to make a replacement.
It's a solid, confidence-inspiring piece of no-frills engineering. There are THREE belts driving a very substantial arbour. It is a build-quality much higher that I think Taiwanese to be, they have really got their act together. There is nothing which feels flimsy. The extension tables fit nice and flush all the way along. Rise and fall is nice and smooth. All loverly, loverly, loverly.
The only problem is the size really, and once I have that sorted, it should be just the ticket, especially as the machine itself is not very much bigger than the one it replaced. Just much, much more substantial. I'm really looking forward to using it.
Finally, does anyone know how I can host my pics with (in this case) Fotopic but have them displayed here directly instead of as a link? I've always used my own webspace before, but if I can store them elsewhere I'd rather do so. But I can only find how to link to the HTML page, not the photo itself. Have I just picked the wrong provider? Edit - Sorted, thanks.
I don't think you'll be disappointed with the 806 - it's a lovely bit of kit 8) 
