Ok, so here I sit on a Friday night with nothing else to do, but rant. Boy, I’m becoming the cranky old man my wife says I am…
So, what is wrong with people? Why can’t people take care of their equipment? I don’t get it. I just don’t. How do you let $1,400 to $1,700 machines go to pot? (The respective prices of the two machines below…new.)
Recently, I’ve acquired a couple pieces of machinery; a Grizzly G1033 (20” planer) and a Delta DJ-20 (8” jointer). I can thank a fellow Creeker for the planer, but none of my comments apply to him because he never used the planer…he bought it used, and it sat in his garage until I got it. So, the condition of the planer was from its original owner. I got the jointer off CL, which, as it turns out, was a pawn shop “that acquired it from a friend who it sitting around in his shed….yada, yada, yada…”. Both units were shameful in different ways.
The planer had paint spattered, dripped, and sputtered on it, with some overspray to boot. And not just on the outside…on the bed, on the cutterhead (actually, to be more precise, in the knife groove of the cutterhead), on the rollers, as well as on the body. There were minor rust spots on the bed. And my brother and I tackled the adjustments…oh my G! EVERY adjustment that was possible (except for the chain that drives the sprockets) needed tuning. And not just a little, either. For anyone that has adjusted a planer, you will understand what I am about to explain, for others, you’ll get it, just follow along.
Measuring the bed relative to the upper assembly (where the feed rollers and cutterhead are) the front right post (1) was the frame of reference, so we’ll call that 0. Front right post (2) was .012” low. Grizzly’s specs allow for .016”, so this wasn’t so bad. Back left post (3) was .028” low. And back right post (4) was .048” low! There is NO WAY to have gotten a board even close to flat with those settings. We got them all to well within the allotted variance. They all ended up within .004, even post 2, it raised with the adjustment of the others. The chip breaker was set about ¼” above the cutterhead…no wonder why when I was trying the planer out before these adjustments, it seemed like more chips were on the bed than picked up by the DC. The bed rollers were at least a 1/16” higher than the bed! A recent thread about planer adjustments yielded a consensus that .002” higher than the bed worked best for most folks. I ended up getting them at .004.
The jointer. There is was so much paint splatter and overspray on this thing, I’m convinced it was used as a spray booth table. I did my best to get as much of the drips, splats, and fine droplets of paint off without chipping off the original paint. I gave up long before getting it all off because I realized that if I kept on going, I would have a rehab on my hands, and I just don’t have the time or patience for that right now…as if I would have it any other time… The bed was rusted. Lots of elbow grease, rust remover and a putty knife. That turned out as well as can be expected. Great, no. Perfect, no. It is obvious that it was “worked on”. But, as I’ve said in another post, the outfeed table ended up .0035 concave (well within specs) and the infeed table was even better. (Ha!, Van…another one!...or is that part of the same…I don’t know…) The motor was wired for 110, and when I rewired it for 220…man! I don’t know how that motor was turning, but it was NOT like the wiring diagram for 110. My rewire was successful (but wrong direction, then had to switch the black and red wires and presto, perfect). Now, I don’t expect everyone to clean their tools to the extent that I did when I got this, but c’mon, this thing looked like it was in a auto shop, caked with grease in the nooks, and there was no way to even get to some of the adjustments. The air compressor that I got off CL that came from a tire shop looked about the same. The blades had nicks so deep, that I’m not so sure that the blades can be resharpened. That led me to the decision that I could either get two new sets of blades (you have to have two, one for when the other set is out getting sharpened) or go with a Byrd head…guess which one I went for… So, that part of the tuning of the jointer was about changing out the cutterhead. {BTW, side note, I just saw a DJ-20 on CL today for $750 with a rusted bed, but the cabinet looked very clean…no Byrd head…I got mine for $400 with $329 for the Byrd…WOOHOO…Oh, Van, there’s another one!) Also, I found all sorts of plastics shavings in the jointer. I don't want to know what it was used for...
The bottom line, how, why, what on Earth are people thinking when they treat their machines like junk? I mean, yeah, these are Grizzly and Delta’s, not $3000+ machines, but still… Very nice, expensive (at least to my wallet) machines. I just don’t see how they get this abused.
I suppose I shouldn’t complain because I got such great deals on these because of the way they had been treated…
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Originally Posted by John Harden
