The first thing I did was put it on the HTC3000 mobile base. The base fits as well as I expected but could use better wheel bearings as this thing is extremely heavy and my 135 lb. self can move it on my own with some hard pushing. After I got off all the shipping grease I could I went right to work with my new entertainment center project.
I ran a few test pieces of pine through and everything seemed to be setup well enough so I started with my walnut stock. the spiral cutter is listed as a 12” but when I started face jointing I couldn’t see how I could go any wider than 11.5”...the cutter just isn’t wide enough. I really like the cutters though: they are relatively quiet, leave a smooth finish, and the shavings are very small so there isn’t much chance of a clog in the dust collection.
When we were face jointing 11.5” black walnut I probably could have done it alone but only barely. The machine never bogged but I could barely push the wood over the cutter while removing about 1/32”. A softer wood with fewer burls and less width would have been like butter. I did a non-stop face joint of 1/32” removal on 6” wide black walnut for about 2 hours and although I felt warmth coming from the cabinet when I was cleaning up I felt no signs of the tool getting tired during its use.
When we were edge jointing the same 11.5” boards we felt the fence flexing. There was no flex in a direction that would effect the result of the cut but it’s still annoying. The length of the fence bothers me more than the stiffness of it. I spend most of my time with my hands on the outfeed side of the cutter so if my hands or push pads slip or the wood moves forward suddenly I naturally move away from the cutter. The fence covers the entire length of the infeed table but only a little more than a foot of the outfeed table. This doesn’t give me much to push against when edge jointing. When I’m edge jointing pieces only a few feet long or shorter this isn’t a problem at all but when I’m edge jointing stuff on the order of 6 feet long it would be nice to have a few extra inches on the fence. I would like a longer and stiffer fence.
Cons so far with the jointer:
The cutter isn’t a full 12”
The safety guard behind the fence is cheesy but effective.
The safety on the operator side isn’t mounted properly so even when fully closed some of the cutter is exposed.
The fence isn’t as long or as stiff as I would like.
I’m using the Rockler wall mounted dust collection system and although the Grizzly machine isn’t perfect, the dust collection never clogged and after filling up about 2 lawn and leaf bags worth of dust I only had about a soda can worth of dust so I’m pretty happy. There are a few stray bits of dust that spit out the front onto the planer table so I have to blow them away before planing my next piece but the planer dust collection works great with just the 1 4” hose. I get more dust spitting out when jointing than when planing but the jointer dust collection with 1 4” hose is about the same as a table saw using 1 4” hose so it’s still pretty good. I’m going to try using a y-adaptor while jointing to see if using both ports makes a significant difference.
We had an instance of a board going in slightly crooked and it jumped a guard rail on the edge of the planer table and gouges the board very badly. The board had a jagged edge so I can see how it happened but seriously though, an extra 1/8” in height would have prevented it all together. I had to go from 0.82” down to 0.62” just to fix the gouge and this was on a 70”x11.5” plank of black walnut so it wasn’t a cheap gouge. The guard rails are also covered in a white paint that doesn’t stick to the machine very well. It chipped and rubbed off rather easily onto the boards. This problem will go away on its own within the next day or two since the paint will rub and chip away from those areas.
More on the planer feature: I also seem to have a problem with snipe about 3” away from the infeed and outfeed ends and I am convinced it’s from me using inferior roller stands. Thick about how this style of machine works. When you adjust the thickness you are raising or lowering the table and the cutter remains stationary. This means your stands also need to be raised or lowered to give you a perfect infeed and outfeed. If the stands are the wrong height then as soon as the second feed roller grabs when you are starting or the first lets go when you are finishing you get a change in the angle of the board relative to the table. The stands I was using weren’t meant for this much precision or accuracy particularly in a garage with a floor as non-uniform as mine. A few extra inches of infeed and outfeed would give me a better chance of combatting the snipe even while using inferior stands. I may very well find some type of infeed/outfeed attachment from someone else’s machine and adapt it to work with this one just so I don’t have to fuss with the stands so much.
Thank you everyone for giving me suggestions on how to reduce tearout. I haven’t yet tried any but I can safely say my cutters are plenty capable of giving a beautiful finish and the feed rate on the planer is my problem. I tried face jointing a scrap about the same feed rate as the planer and got similar tearout. I then tried a much slower feed rate while jointing and got a beautiful finish with absolutely no tearout. I am 100% pleased with the finish the cutters leave at this slower rate. All I need to do now is see if there’s a way to slow down the feed rate on the planer and I’ll have a stellar machine that far exceeds my expectations.
Cons so far with the planer:
The guard rails on the edges of the planer table aren’t tall enough.
The guard rails are painted white instead of being raw metal.
I really want more infeed and outfeed on the planer bed.
The feed rate is faster than I would like. It gives tearout on the burls of the walnut I ran through it.
Last updated and revised 8/23/11
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