Stan Smith
04-13-2004, 11:33 PM
I'm writing this just in case it might help someone else. I had considered Grizzly, Bridgewood, and ShopFox for an 8" Jointer. I had wanted a Bridgewood but the shipping costs were $330. I liked the post switch on the ShopFox but then discovered the Delta 37-380 had one. The price was only $49 more than the Bridgewood but Amazon was giving $25 off and the shipping was free on the Delta. A friend has one and recommended it highly as did the customer reviews on Amazon (good place to check customer reviews).
We picked the item up at the trucking terminal knowing that they would load it in the pickup with a forklift. We unloaded everything except the tables. We assembled the mobile base and cabinet and just sort of slid the tables from the truck bed onto the base cabinet. We discovered that the motor had not been mounted by the factory so had to do that ourselves with great difficulty. The manual is not correct on how to adjust the belt tension either but that is easy to see. Getting the bolts in the right places was sort of by trial and error since you can't go by the manual on those either. The cutter head was perfectly aligned with the infeed and outfeed tables. I just adjusted the fence to 90deg with the bed, lowered the infeed table by 1/32 and was ready for my first test cut. I had a piece of alder bowed on 2 sides and the jointer did a great job making the piece straight. I did cut a few inches off each end to save more stock. All four sides were as smooth as glass.
The unit came very securely packed and there was no apparent shipment damage. I am impressed with the quality of it being made in China compared to my other offshore-made equipment. The guard tension spring was a little buggered up so I called Delta yesterday afternoon for a replacement. It came at 10:30 this morning--less than 24 hours! Amazing! I'm quite please with this purchase.
Stan
We picked the item up at the trucking terminal knowing that they would load it in the pickup with a forklift. We unloaded everything except the tables. We assembled the mobile base and cabinet and just sort of slid the tables from the truck bed onto the base cabinet. We discovered that the motor had not been mounted by the factory so had to do that ourselves with great difficulty. The manual is not correct on how to adjust the belt tension either but that is easy to see. Getting the bolts in the right places was sort of by trial and error since you can't go by the manual on those either. The cutter head was perfectly aligned with the infeed and outfeed tables. I just adjusted the fence to 90deg with the bed, lowered the infeed table by 1/32 and was ready for my first test cut. I had a piece of alder bowed on 2 sides and the jointer did a great job making the piece straight. I did cut a few inches off each end to save more stock. All four sides were as smooth as glass.
The unit came very securely packed and there was no apparent shipment damage. I am impressed with the quality of it being made in China compared to my other offshore-made equipment. The guard tension spring was a little buggered up so I called Delta yesterday afternoon for a replacement. It came at 10:30 this morning--less than 24 hours! Amazing! I'm quite please with this purchase.
Stan