New mortiser: grizzly or general?

[Jim Barstow]

I just finished making 48 mortises with my old delta desktop mortiser and decided it's time to upgrade. I'm trying to decide between
2 floorstanding machines: the general 75-075 and the grizzly GO448. The general gets really good reviews but I can't find any of the G0448. (The are reviews of grizzly's older floor standing machine and they weren't very good). The G0448 looks to be completely different from the old floor standing machine.

I have 3 grizzly machines (15" planer, 12" jointer, and 17" bandsaw) and have been quite pleased with them. (I am an amateur but since I retired this year my backlog of projects has increased exponentially with requests from people who know I have more time.) I'd like to go with the grizzly even though it is more expensive but I'm reluctant to by a machine that is an unknown versus one that is known to be good.

Anyone have any experience with the G0448?

[Stephen Cherry]

Jim- the first thing to consider is the size of the hole. The machines you mentioned in my opinion are good up to about 3/8, but will take some work. If you want to easily make big square holes, I think that a larger machine would be in order. As for brand, I have some Grizzlers also, and think that they are fine.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Jim,

I learned in my initial experience using a mortise that the sharpening tools are as important as the mortise. To get trouble free mortises regardless of the brand and model you pick, the hollow chisel and bit must be sharp....sharp....sharp.

From WoodCraft and Rockler I bought a mortise chisel reamer and a set of diamond hones. 2 sets......one each ......from each business. You ream the edge then hone it with a diamond hone.
I use a flat jewelers file to sharpen the drill bit.

I have the smaller version of the GI mortiser and I made 40+ in white oak...in a very short period of time. I started by sharpening and stopped half way through the process and resharpened.

With no experience on the 2 mortisers you are considering, I can't comment or recommend.

[John Downey]

I've no experience with either machine, but they look to be the same machine with different paint and different hand wheels. A friend of mine has the Powermatic paint job on that machine and likes it fine. I've never been a fan of those gas piston returns, but they work fine while they work. Once they loose their oomph, I've heard you can buy a replacement piston easily enough too.

That older floor model Grizzly is one to avoid though, the G4814. I worked in a shop that had one of those and it was very fatiguing to use for any length of time. The return assist was done with a big tension spring in the column, so the force required to extend the spring was the maximum at the bottom of the head stroke, and the benefit from the work extending that spring was the minimum at the top of the stroke. Even with a 1/4" bit you were always pulling hard on the handle to make the mortise and lifting the head by brute force for the last inch of lift. Horrible. The spring was huge for what it did, I suspect now that pre-tensioning it a bit might have minimized the effect, at the expense of it being harder to pull down throughout the stroke.

[Bill White]

We use a G0448 every day on heart pine, SYP, white, and red oak. Biggest prob we've had has been those caused by the operators.