Grizzly 8 inch spiral cutterhead jointer?

[Dan Forman]

Has anyone used the Grizzly G0543 8" jointer with the spiral cutterhead? How does it compare to other 8" jointers?

I plan on doing a fair amount of work with fugured woods, see the spiral cutterhead as an advantage re: tearout.

Thanks,

Dan

[John Scane]

I have the Oliver 10" jointer with a spiral cutter head. The head takes flexible blades....I know the grizzly is a different kind but with mine I am very happy. I can face joint 10"wide curly maple and birdseye with no tearout if I'm careful and with slight tearout if I feed the board quickly......which you shouldn't really do so it's a moot point. Anyway I am very happy I got the spiral cutterhead.

[Alan Mikkelsen]

I'm a bit curious. After you run highly figured wood across the jointer, do you put it through your planer, and if so, does your planer have helical knives?

[JayStPeter]

My plan is to replace the cutterhead on my Grizzly 8" with a helical soon. It's really just a matter of when the cash flows correctly now.
I've seen the results of them firsthand on figured wood. I have NO doubts.

Alan, you make a good point. My longer term plan is to get a drum sander. For figured woods, I'll use the combo of jointer/drum sander. Others will go through the knifed planer (until I can afford helical there too :D ). Until the drum sander comes along, figured woods will hit the planer, then go through the jointer again to smooth the tearout. Since I use a planer with indexed knives, it's pretty easy to put a fresh set in when dealing with difficult woods. I often do that now.

Jay

[Dan Forman]

John---The Oliver looks good, but too much for me at this time.

Alan---Actually, I don't have much of a shop as yet, just putting one together at this stage, so haven't had to deal with that yet. I have heard some use the jointed side as the outward facing surface, or clean up the planed face with the jointer.

Jay---The drum sander sounds good too. No lack of things to spend money on is there?

Still hoping to hear from a G0543 owner.

Dan

[John Renzetti]

hi Dan, There are spirals and then there are spirals. I haven't used the Grizzly but a friend has a bridgewood with the USA Byrd Tool Shellix spiral. It does give a nice finish. The Shellix is different in that the individual knives are arranged at an angle so that the knives give a truer sheer cut. I think both Bridgewood and Oliver offer the Shellix as an OEM option.
Still from a cost benefit standpoint I just can't see spending an additional $800 on a machine that might cost around $1000-1500 in the first place.
On difficult grained woods, I just run the boards across the cutterhead at an angle and get zero tearout. I do have more room to do this on my machines so the 8" jointer width might be a limiting factor.
Just my .02
take care,
John

[John Scane]

I usually plane it down to a point with the planner and then take it to the drum sander for final passes. eventually i would like to get a planner with a helical cutter head.