Contributor
Another happy Grizzly G490X owner here. It was about 1/2 the price of the Powermatic equivalent at the time I bought mine.
At the time I bought mine there were several threads here at SMC where owners of the Grizzly's were experience loose pulleys. So when mine arrived before I even turned it on, I removed the set screws from the pulleys, put a little blue Loc-Tite thread locker (removeable type thread locker) on them, reinstalled and tightened them. I haven't had a problem with mine.
Ken
So much to learn, so little time.....
Contributor
Damn you are getting exactly what I want. just need to add a master bedroom addition so I can expand the basement shop so I would have room for it. I tried very hard to figure out how to fit a 16" combo in the basement. Just not willing to down size the SawStop Pcs to a 24" rip machine to fit it in. The addition would let me have both a 16" combo, a slider and a walkout entrance. Only thing standing in the way is about 80-100k plus the tool cost. Paid the house off last year, retire any time I want. Would have to work another 10-15 years to pay addition off. Have a new Shop Fox " 8" segmented head in the crate in storage that hopefully will fit in place of a 6" Jet I have used since 1988.Originally Posted by William Chain
Enjoy your new A3-41, i am jealous
Ron
Contributor
I agree with buying your next jointer first. I have a buddy with a band saw mill and have access to lots of freebie offcuts and rough dimensioned stock. I finally upgraded to a 12" Griz (G0609X-spiral-84")
and 20" Griz planer(1033x) and now my favorite part of WWing is milling (free) stock. I made 8' and 5' torsion boxes to manage stock wider than 12" with the planer but could frequently use a 16" jointer.
Having the capacity to mill my own stock helps me consider doing projects that I would have second thoughts on if bargain wood weren't at hand. Just a hobbiest and I have helped non WWing friends get interested in building projects so that has been a bonus as well. Sooooo-I suggest considering how you can source your lumber and what type of projects you look forward to building. Machine specifics--
insert head and the longest and widest bed you can get. Old iron is nice but hard to find with insert heads and new should be good to go out of the box. The Griz was and has been flawless since. Good luck shopping.
Member
Jim, I buy S3S generally. It's all processed at my supplier on a Weinig, it comes in dead flat. Their machine is superior my Felder and I'm happy to pay the small fee for S3S on the common woods we get. Some oak was easy to get to, that's what's in the pic. The one with my keys on it is the new Weinig, the curly is their old machine. New is better, but the old one handled that curl just fine. I always buy S3S for red and white oak, poplar, and alder. Walnut sometimes not. The more exotic stuff is pretty much whatever I can get, but it's usually S3S to.
oak.jpg curly oak.jpg
Moderator
You are truly lucky to have a supplier that can provide that level of quality.
--
The most expensive tool is the one you buy "cheaply" and often...
Member
That is true. Reasonable delivery rates to. Not many of us out here, but I definitely recommend Wood Stock Supply if you live anywhere remotely close to Rapid City SD.
Agreed. Alas, I am no where near SD unless San Diego counts. The S3S that I get locally may or may not be in a usable state, Thinner stock that they have pre-prepared for drawer boxes or kitchen and bath parts are generally usable for those purposes although not for something like a huntsboard. I generally mill everything as joinery and assemblies go together so nicely when everything is aligned and true. I also tend to buy more than I need as I have to travel a ways to get material. This means material can hang around for a year so even if usable on day one, by day 300 this may not be so
.
"A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg".
– Samuel Butler
Member
Shipping may be higher Glenn...Agreed. Alas, I am no where near SD unless San Diego counts
Contributor
Another happy grizzly owner. G0656x here. Table was flat within .005 according to my straight edge, and the sprial cutterhead has been good enough for me (though I don't run much stuff with crazy figure). Sure a powermatic might be nicer, I could see where the fence could use a bit more fit and finish. But at no point have I been dissatisfied with the quality of machine I bought. If someone broke in to my house and stole it (RIP their back) I'd order another one right away.
For me the 8" has been great because everything I buy usually falls into the 6-8" range - I don't want to pay the 8"+ premium for the work I do. But I'll agree with others about the benefits of a wider jointer, it just depends if you'll use wide stock or not.
Contributor
I have a G0857 (8", 4 straight knives, parallelogram table). It's pretty close to your price range.
The build quality is fairly good. Tables and fence were within 0.003" of flat when I got it. Since you asked about features I'll give my thoughts briefly:
Parallelogram vs Dovetail way
The main advantage of a parallelogram mechanism is ease of adjusting the tables to be coplanar. There are adjustment cams you turn with a socket, one on each corner of each table, and you can bring each corner up or down as required. With a dovetail way you adjust by inserting shims, which seems far more tedious.
One downside to the common 8" parallelogram jointers is that they use levers for raising/lowering the tables, instead of handwheels. The lever is fine on the infeed table, but I would rather have a handwheel on the outfeed to make fine adjustments as the knives wear. Pretty tricky to move the table 0.002" with just the lever.
If a dovetail jointer is delivered with the tables in-tune (which seems fairly common judging by reviews- though mine needed a little tweaking to get it perfect). then there's no downside. It's only when you need to make adjustments that the mechanism comes into play.
Straight Knives vs Insert/Spiral
I went with the straight knife version since I had never had much of an issue with tearout on my lunchbox planer, and it was about $500 cheaper. For the most part tear-out has not been a big issue, the worst I've experienced was with a recent run of Sapele (ribbon-grain) but I was able to mitigate it by taking a very light cut. If you leave a bit of thickness on your part, you can run both faces through the planer to get rid of tearout. For some reason my DeWalt lunchbox planer is almost immune to tearout.
With sharp knives I think you get a little better surface quality (brighter) with straight knives, assuming no tearout. Though this is not a very big deal, since you will inevitably sand or handplane the jointer ripples out prior to finishing.
The bigger difference probably lies in the maintenance. It takes me about 30 minutes to change and set the knives on the 4-knife head. It can take a lot longer until you get the hang of it. If you get a knick, you need to slide a knife over and re-set it to match the others. With the spiral head you just rotate one or two inserts and tighten the screws.
If the straight knives don't chip or get knicked, they last quite a while for hobby use. Probably at least a year or two. However the factory knives on the G0857 were very chip prone, bad enough that it wasn't worth it to try to reset the knives just to get 10 minutes of use before noticing knicks again. I replaced these with a set of Amana T1 knives, which have been much better. Almost a year on these and no knicks yet.
Last point- loudness. Apparently spiral heads are quieter during cutting. Could be, but the loudest aspect of my jointer is the air-raid siren created by the straight knives when the dust collector is running. It is extremely loud, louder than the lunchbox planer. With the dust collector off its a fairly quiet machine. I am not sure if spiral heads are better, but if so, that might be the thing that would push me towards one rather than concerns about tearout.
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