powermatic 15s planer [Archive] - Sawmill Creek Woodworking Community

Kim Spence

07-04-2007, 1:52 AM

Barry - you must be on the fence with the 15s? Believe you posted similar question a while back? Copied my previous response below. Hope this helps.

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I have one and it works fine, but not sure I would buy it if I had to do it again. You're paying premium price but I'm not sure the product is really premium.

The steel spiral blades cut quietly and smoothly as long as they're sharp, but they don't stay sharp long at all. And once they're dull they're trash, can't be resharpened. If you nick a blade they can't be shifted side to side to hide the nick. And they're expensive, believe around $50 give or take for a set, seems steep considering they're disposable. On the positive side, when the blades are fresh the cut is very impressive especially in figured hardwoods. Quality of cut in softwoods is marginal.

Snipe is noticible, but not terribly bad...I haven't taken time to try to adjust roller pressure or anything to reduce it. I've just taken to running back over the jointer to get rid of snipe.

On the positive side the best feature of the machine is the digital readout, I wouldn't be without that now that I've got used to it.

I got mine from a local dealer and when I uncrated it the gearbox cover was shattered. Dealer ordered me replacement cover but it came in old Jet Blue instead of PM Gold. So I asked dealer to follow up with PM and they sent Gold spraypaint. Seems like they should have sent me a Gold gearbox cover. I've had it 2 years now and still haven't painted it...

Bottom line, if I was to do it over again I'd take a real hard look at the Grizzly G1021X for $1595 including CARBIDE spiral cutterhead and add an aftermarket digital readout. From the looks of it the G1021X is Grizzly's version of pretty much the exact same machine as the 15s, the castings and everything look identical. I have a Griz jointer with the same Carbide cutterhead and I love it.

Hope this helps and happy shopping!