Grizzly vs. Busybee tools

[rudy de haas]

I wish that were true - And if you know how to make it so, it's rudy@winface.com and I'd love to hear from you.

I have not found a Canadian seller that gets close to the G0675 on specs or price. Hammer's A3-260 is, I think, a better machine, but it's also twice the price and not currently available in Canada. (I also looked at Rikon 12" , but think it junk.) I've scanned kijiji for six weeks now without finding anything I wanted and could afford (There's a nice Laguna saw in Saskatoon and a Powermatic Jointer in Winnipeg, but they're both too expensive.)

Some jointers and some table saws sold by busybee here are the same as grizzly's products - but even after payiing UPS grizzly's are cheaper.

Right now I'm leaning toward getting a DW735 planer from busybee ($545), a G0715P saw and G0656P jointer from Grizzly (both CSA). After shipping etc, that's still less than getting the nearest equivelents from busybee. I don't have much space and having the bigger jointer with a separate planer will be a pain, but having two machines has to be better than one - and the fact that the jointer is dovetail (the cx08 is parallelogram) shouldn't be too much of a problem.

But if I'm wrong, please let me know..

[Wade Lippman]

I agree two machines are better than one. I looked into combination machines a few years back and concluded they were a mistake.
However, I recommend a 15" planer over the DW735. Might be twice the price, but worth it.

[Rick Fisher]

I agree with Wade on the planers. A DW735 is not half the machine of a floor model machine.

[mreza Salav]

If you think Rikon model is junk I highly doubt you'd be happy with that Grizzly model.
I don't know where in Alberta you are located but here are two decent deals on good jointers and planers. One is a Delta 8" X5 jointer for $800 (which you might bring down a bit) and one is a 15" floor standing planer for $500:

http://www.kijiji.ca/v-power-tool/ed...ationFlag=true
http://www.kijiji.ca/v-power-tool/ed...ationFlag=true

[Derek Stockley]

Hammer's A3-260 is, I think, a better machine, but it's also twice the price and not currently available in Canada.

Is that a recent change? I have an A3-26 that I bought a year or two ago in Ontario and it's a great machine. Before that, I had an import jointer and a DW734. It's definitely not cheap, either in price or construction, and you have to call them to get the actual price of it, which I find annoying. The only part I regret about it is not spending the extra money for the spiral cutter head, but they had literally JUST come out at the time and I couldn't find any reviews.

I don't have much space and having the bigger jointer with a separate planer will be a pain, but having two machines has to be better than one

Having enough space to move around far outweighs the drawbacks if your space is truly cramped. The biggest drawback I've seen with it so far is that since the same knives are doing both the planing and jointing duties, they don't last as long as if you're splitting those duties between two machines. So you need to be a bit more protective of your knives when it comes to grit, dirt and glue. Also ... portable planers are horrifically noisy and comparatively under-powered. A combination machine is a compromise that favours compactness over the convenience of walking up and just using a machine. Because my space is so small, I have to move stuff around to use it a lot of the time anyway so the setup time is about the same for me.

[rudy de haas]

I'm 661 KM from the jointer. Getting it here adds abut $300 to the cost -and that's without my going to see it first - leaving it about the same as a new CX08 rom busybee. (The x5 is a good machine, but I haven't seen this one; and the 80" length is nice to use, but tough to store given space constraints.)

You're right about the planer - planers appear on kjijii all the time and that may be a good machine at a decent price. If I go with separate machines, I'll be watching the Calgary ads closely for something like this - and if I weren't six hours from Edmonton I'd be going to look at this one. He's got a General 6" jointer too - I got to play with one of those and thought it too small for me, but pretty good.

I saw the rikon 12" at a Calgary wood working store staffed by a couple of guys watching soccer. Since I didn't know the magic handshake needed to talk to them I only spent a few minutes with the machine they had on display. Some problems probably came from the set-up (e.g. pulley assemblies) but some seem designed in (e.g.bolt threads on the fence mean it probably needs shims and will go out of adjustment easily). Short and lightweight tables would be ok, but these need to be made more rigid, etc). The grizzly seems much more like the old inca: flatter, finely threaded, solid stops, unobstructed internals, etc.

[rudy de haas]

Sorry - guess I was unclear. The A3-260 is sold in Canada, but an email from scot marsden says there aren't any in stock.