Shaper help with router collet

[michael gates]

I bought a used 5hp grizzly shaper and it came with a router collet as shown.
I can not figure out how to tighten the bit. There is no way to get a wrench on the top so you can tighten from the bottom.I can hold onto the pulley and tighten it but I cant get it tight enough.
Maybe I am missing a thin wrench that has a bend in it to get it to work.

Or do I raise the router bit out of the collet enough to get the wrench on it, that would be around 5/8" to 3/4"

[Jamie Buxton]

Are you missing a part? The collets for my routers have two parts -- a thing like you've shown, plus a nut that fits over it. To tighten the collet, you put a wrench on the nut.

[scott vroom]

If you don't get a quick answer here you could try calling Grizzly tech support. How old is the shaper?

[Bill ThompsonNM]

Does it have a threaded hole in the bottom? Some of them tighten with a threaded rod that goes down through the spindle. You tighten a nut against the spindle pulling the collet in, tightening it around the bit.

[michael gates]

The Shaper is 10 months old.

Bill is right on how it works but i have to leave the bit raised up about 5/8 to 3/4 of an inch to fit the wrench under it. It seems like it is held pretty good but it makes me a little timid to have the bit so far out of the collet.

[Jeff Duncan]

My shaper works the same way except that there's no need for a wrench under the bit. Do you have any other way of locking the spindle when you tighten it? I would not be comfortable with 3/4" of shank exposed.

It should show in the manual how to perform this procedure, alternatively you may want to call Grizzly to confirm your doing things correctly.


good luck,
JeffD

[Greg Portland]

Michael, definitely call Grizzly and see what they recommend. If you're doing everything correctly, I would suggest taking the wrench and bending it (two 90° bends so the head is 1" or so lower then the handle). I had to do a similar thing when I mounted my Hitachi router into the router table. The bent wrench made tightening bits a breeze.

[michael gates]

I found a thin wrench that works good and keeps the bit low.

For some reason my shaper has a little different setup than is shown on the website picture I attatched. There is not two nuts on the bottom of the draw bar like shown in this pic. Mine only has the tapered nut and above that their is a lock ring where the big nut is shown on Grizzly web site.

The big nut would be nice so I could use two wrenches under the table to tighten the draw bar, I dont know why mine would be different unless Grizzly just made the change and added the second nut.

[michael gates]

This will help show what I mean.