Review of new Grizzly 0691 cabinet saw
Purchase
I tried to buy this saw in January at the winter sale price, but the sale ended Dec. 31 and sine Grizzly wouldn’t give me the sale price I told them I would wait for the spring sale. With the Woodworker’s Journal 10% coupon I ordered on March 2 a couple months before the usual Grizzzly spring sale date.
Delivery
Delivery worked out great. A UPS semi and full size trailer with lift gate showed up at my curb on schedule. (Mobile base was delivered earlier). Trailer had my 4 boxes and a couple others – lots of open space. No wonder there’s an additional charge for residential delivery. With help from the driver’s pallet jack, my cheapo hand truck and $20 for the driver we had everything in the garage in 10 minutes.
The only concern was the fence rails where the box was badly damaged, but luckily no damage to the rails. Other than the rails everything else was very well packaged. The packaging for the saw was outstanding. The box was banded to its pallet and the bottom of the cabinet was bolted to the pallet. After ripping off the cardboard box, there was fiberboard protecting the table and a braced wood frame protecting all 4 corners of the cabinet. It took about an hour to unpack everything in the garage.
Moving the saw to the basement shop
After several days of rumination and with some great advice from fellow Creekers, I decided to remove the top and the motor from the cabinet. With the help of a friend and a rented appliance dolly it went down the stairs smoothly and was safely in the basement shop in less than 5 minutes. The stripped down cabinet weighed 160 pounds and the dolly weighed another 40. Everything else was carried down piece by piece, heaviest were the motor and top at about 70 pounds each.
Assembly
I had to reassemble the top and motor but first I checked the trunion bolts were all tight. The motor is a two person job so my dear wife was recruited to drop the mounting pin while I held the motor in position. She also helped out with the table extensions. Everything else I could do solo. The Grizzly assembly instructions are outstanding and there were no missing parts. Grizzly also provides a set of metric allen wrenches that are needed for assembly.
Most of the assembly was straight forward but a few things were a little more involved. Getting the table extensions level was a two step process. They both needed to be shimmed with masking tape, so they had to be removed, shimmed, and reinstalled. Rail installation was also a two step process, aligning before and then again after the extension table was installed. Aligning the extension table with the saw table also took several cycles. This was more involved because the table legs are a little long. This left little room for height adjustment which is further complicated with the mobile base extension kit, because access for an adjusting wrench is very tight. Later when setting up the fence, the table alignment needed to be adjusted again.
Riving knife alignment is tricky and there’s a bit more to it than was described in the instructions. That said, I’m not sure how better to describe it. It just took a bit longer to figure out how to adjust the 4 adjusting screws and 2 locking screws.
The blade wasn’t parallel to the miter slot so the top needed to be shifted. Would have been easier if I did this before installing the rails and extension table, but still not too difficult. Adjusting the fence level and table clearance took a few cycles to get right. Back of fence is towed 1/64 away from parallel with the miter slot. One gripe is the fence cursor line is wavy and looks like it was hand painted. I need to call Grizzly and see about a replacement.
The saw comes with a 6’ power cord, which (for me) was useless. I replaced it with a 15’ cord and cheapo 20 amp plug from Home Depot.
Something amusing that I found in the manual, after I was done: Estimated assembly time - 1 hour. It took me an hour just to get everything unpacked! Then another 8 to 10 hours to assemble and adjust.
Initial operation
So far I’m extremely happy. First project was an outfeed table made by repurposing a reject kitchen cabinet carcass with a top using a modular office desk top. I added a support frame with casters underneath to be able to wheel the table around the shop and toggle clamps at the corners to level the table with the saw. I’ll later add drawers and doors to the cabinet. Also need to add miter slots to the table top.
The saw runs very smooth with plenty of power. I used a cheapo craftsman 200T plywood blade for cutting the 1.125” particle board top. Two passes from opposite sides, so not that much of a test. But the cuts were nice and smooth. The combo blade Grizzly provided seems fine, but I replaced it with a Freud 50T combo blade (the Sears $7.99 clearance special from a few months ago) and it does a nice job.
So far I’m real happy with the whole Grizzly experience.
Here are a couple pics.
DSC_0420.jpgDSC_0417.jpg
Steve
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great lookng saw and a really nice set up. that shop looks quite spacious and indescently clean. i notice that there is a "clamp" on the bottom of each leg of the outfeed table. what are they there for?
