"Tim Mitchell" wrote in message
...
In article , Mary
We look forward to your review of the thing when you get it - I'm thinking
of getting one too.

Initially I had a cheap and cheerful rotating blade one from B&Q - can't
remember the make at the moment but it was green :-) It worked OK but was
prone to jamming if too much soft material was put in, and you had to put in
some effort to feed it. It came with a black plastic paddle to help push
stuff down the shute. When it jammed it was a case of undoing a thumbscrew
and removing the case to clear the blockage. It didn't take too long for
the thread on the plastic bit it screwed into to got worn, making it even
more fiddly to do up again. It finally bit the dust when a piece of metal
accidentally got fed into it and the blades were damaged. They were
reversible but I couldn't get one of the screws undone to do this despite
application of WD40, a blowtorch and lots of cursing.

After reading some comments on here I got a Bosch AXT2000HP from these
people on eBay - http://stores.ebay.co.uk/HOME-AND-GARDEN-MART

It's a graded machine, shows some signs of use, but works just fine. It's
screw type instead of a fast rotating blade and it's streets ahead of the
item described above. It's much quieter, handles thicker material and
pretty much feeds itself as stuff is dropped in the top. If it jams just
flip the switch to reverse the screw and the offending item pops back out
for you to try again or throw away.

Hope that helps.

Mark