On Thursday I took delivery of a Grizzly G0634 jointer/planer combo machine. This is the one with the spiral cutterhead. Before I start I want everyone to know that I have never owned either a jointer or a planer before. Last year I did take an evening woodworking class at a local high school. That was my introduction to woodworking machinery. Tablesaw, bandsaw, jointer, planer, etc. Prior to this I did everything with hand tools. I have and will continue to use handplanes, saws, chisels, etc. My point is twofold: 1) My mini-review is done with very little expertise in power machinery, and 2) I have insufficient knowledge to compare the G0634 versus any other jointer or planer. I had originally planned to buy the G0633 (straight knives) but since I work almost exclusively with hardwood and often difficult burls I decided on the spiral cutterhead version.
The G9634 arrived Thursday afternoon. The freight truck driver helped me move the crate into my garage/shop and placed where I wanted it. There was no visible damage to the crate or contents. After uncrating I slid it off the pallet with the help of a friend. Not difficult at all. The G0634 comes fully assembled except for the cutter head guard which is very easy to insert and remove. I did the inventory, all there. Cleaning the protective gunk off the tables took about 1/2 hour using paper towels and mineral spirits. I would rather clean off protective gunk than rust. I then followed the owner's manual and checked for infeed/outfeed tables parallelism, outfeed table height, and all the other checks. Everything was fine, as best I could determine.
Next I wanted to set the infeed table to somethig less than 1/32" to make test cuts. I was somewhat confused on how to do this. Here the manual should be more explicit. For the outfeed table the manual calls the adjuster the "Outfeed Table Adj. Knob". This is good, very clear. However for the infeed table the equivalent adjuster is called "Infeed Handgrip". To me a handgrip is something you grip, not adjust. So I wasn't exactly sure if I was supposed to use this "Grip" or not to make the adjustment. In the end there was nothing else to turn to make the adjustment so that "Grip" must be it. However you must first lossen an inset hex cap screw before the Grip will turn. A minor annoyance is that no hex wrench is supplied for this task. I happen to have a full set of hex wrenches so I found one that fit and made the adjustment.
Now it was time for a trial run to cut some wood.
The first two photos show before and after cleaning of the jointer table.
Following those are photos of the spiral cutterhead, setup for jointing and set up for planing.
By the way, the changeover from jointing to planing, and back again, is very fast and easy. It took me something less than two minutes for the changeover and this included switching the dust collector hose from one dust port to the other.