My impressions of my new Grizzly planer a month later.

[keith micinski]

So I have been tweaking and adjusting my new Grizzly 15 planer with a spiral head for a few weeks now and have observed a few things. First of all the serrated out feed roller is really silly and I would be willing to bet completely useless. That thing doesn't need to be that sharp or that aggressive and I can't believe that it is cheaper to make then a rubber one but I guess I'll never know about that. Hopefully after I get some more wood through it it will wear down a little and not leave any marks on the wood. Second of all I messed with the height of the bed rollers and I even tilted the backs of the tables up a little to try and eliminate the snipe with little success. The number one thing I did to eliminate almost all of the snipe was to back the indeed and out feed roller pressure almost completely off. This thing came from the factory with the settings so tight you could hardly get a piece of wood to go through it which makes absolutely no sense to me but it is what it is I guess. I have really grown to like the planer after getting it all adjusted in but my one major complaint is still that it doesn't have a gauge to tell me the depth of cut or more importantly just a gauge to tell me the zero of the cutter head. The good thing is I am going to remedy that by making my own gauge as soon as I finish my next project and I get a little time with it. Also the gauge it currently has seems like it is set way to shallow if I am running a 4 inch piece through I would like to be able to take a pretty good cut but that thing limits it just a little more then I would like. If a piece has a taper or a high spot o. It at all it starts binding right away. It says it is supposed to limit the cut to a 16/th but there is no way I am getting a 16/th of a cut right now so I may also have to look into that. The spiral head doesn't leave many better of a cut then my DW735 did and actually in some instance it's worse but I sure am looking forward to the long life of the blades with thspiral head. Once I get the zero head gauge made and the out feed roller stops leaving marks in my wood. I think I am going to be really happy with the purchase.

[david brum]

Hey Keith, you might want to take a look at a Wixey planer gauge or an Igaging digital readout. You'll get accurate, repeatable adjustments. I put a Wixey on my 15" planer last year and was tickled at how much more accurate the machine became. I wouldn't want to give it up. I recently installed the Igaging unit on my shaper and like it at least as well. In either case, you have to retrofit a little, but the Wixey website gives lots of examples of how other guys have done it.

[keith micinski]

I am definitely going to be putting a Wixey on it in the near future but that still won't help with zeroing the blades to the piece of wood I am using. I am going to mount a spring loaded cabinet pin so that when the carriage comes down and it hits the board I will know where it will start cutting and I don't have to try and guess or run it through multiple times lowering it down till it makes a cut.

[Curt Harms]

I've had excellent success with an iGaging DRO on a Jet JJP-12. This is not a 4 post planer (duh) but I'll attach a pic which may or may not be useful. The iGaging does not lose calibration and battery life seems very good. It has 2 CR2032 batteries and mine have been in place for close to a year, I guess. The thing with DROs is they're always on. The on/off button only controls the display. That's why you can move the bed with the power off and it won't lose calibration.

The tricky part for me was to devise a means to calibrate. The Wixey has this covered but iGaging does not. I solved my problem by adhering a wood strip to the table with threaded inserts in the wood strip. I then created a clamping mechanism with 2 bolts and a sandpaper face so the metal strip would not move. Plane a piece of wood, measure the thickness then move the DRO 'til the reading on the DRO matches the thickness of the wood. Tighten the bolts and done. I don't recall my exact calibration procedure. I know I had to zero the display but don't honestly remember how I got 1" cut depth to read 1" on the DRO . Did I mention it holds calibration well? Guess I'll figure it out again when the batteries die.

[david brum]

I am definitely going to be putting a Wixey on it in the near future but that still won't help with zeroing the blades to the piece of wood I am using. I am going to mount a spring loaded cabinet pin so that when the carriage comes down and it hits the board I will know where it will start cutting and I don't have to try and guess or run it through multiple times lowering it down till it makes a cut.

I'd love to see a photo of what you come up with. I usually put a caliper on the thickest section of wood and set the cutter slightly lower. It does get tedious when planing rough boards of varying thickness. Last year, someone posted about attaching a piece of flexible plastic to the front of the planer, set at the cutter height. The plastic could bend back a bit as the wood thickness changed.

[Kent Chasson]

I've found that lowering the table rollers completely below the table will often get rid of snipe. No negative consequences except that sometimes you have to push rough, twisted lumber through for the first pass or two.

[keith micinski]

I'd love to see a photo of what you come up with. I usually put a caliper on the thickest section of wood and set the cutter slightly lower. It does get tedious when planing rough boards of varying thickness. Last year, someone posted about attaching a piece of flexible plastic to the front of the planer, set at the cutter height. The plastic could bend back a bit as the wood thickness changed.

I thought of that also but thought maybe the plastic would lose some of its spring over time and become slightly inaccurate. I am sure that will work though, I just want to come up with something a little more elegant. I was going to work on it today but got sucked into another project. I think I already found the spring loaded pin at lowes I just have to figure out how to test mount it and make the foot tapered.

[Larry Frank]

I am surprised the the out feed roller is serrated. I thought that most of them have a serrated in feed roller.

I use my 15" planer mainly for the heavy planning and still use my DW735 to tweak the boards the last few thousandths. With the serrated in feed roller, I can not take a very light pass without leaving marks.

[keith micinski]

Imagine if your out feed roller was serrated. I am not sure why they felt they needed that especially since I have it backed almost all of the way off on the tension and it still feeds it right through.

[Michael Mayo]

I am not familiar with the Grizzly 15" planer but does it have two serrated rollers for infeed and outfeed or is the infeed roller rubber? If it is rubber could it be that the rollers were installed backwards at the factory? Just a thought when i was thinking about it.

[keith micinski]

No, it has a large serrated indeed roller and then a more finely serrated out feed roller. The marks that it leaves really aren't that bad now that I have all of the tension taken off the roller. It doesn't take any more sanding then you would probably do to get the piece ready for finish but it does seem unnecessary to be serrated at all.

[Ed Hazel]

I am definitely going to be putting a Wixey on it in the near future but that still won't help with zeroing the blades to the piece of wood I am using. I am going to mount a spring loaded cabinet pin so that when the carriage comes down and it hits the board I will know where it will start cutting and I don't have to try and guess or run it through multiple times lowering it down till it makes a cut.

I just keep a digital calipers handy and I can quickly measure the the piece and set my Wixey on the machine then I can pressingly take first cut.

[Van Huskey]

I just keep a digital calipers handy and I can quickly measure the the piece and set my Wixey on the machine then I can pressingly take first cut.

That is the method I have always used.

[keith micinski]

Ya that definitely works but if I can eliminate getting the calipers out, hoping the battery is still good, measuring the piece, and then setting the planer up ( I don't know why but when I have a digital readout it is hard for me to not make it perfect even though 5 thousandths off of the first pass isn't going to matter so I waste time trying to nail that exact measurement instead of just making the first cut), it will make things easier for me. I think I will mock something up today since I am probably going to be waiting on glass to come in anyway.

[Mike Goetzke]

Ya that definitely works but if I can eliminate getting the calipers out, hoping the battery is still good, measuring the piece, and then setting the planer up ( I don't know why but when I have a digital readout it is hard for me to not make it perfect even though 5 thousandths off of the first pass isn't going to matter so I waste time trying to nail that exact measurement instead of just making the first cut), it will make things easier for me. I think I will mock something up today since I am probably going to be waiting on glass to come in anyway.

I've had the same machine for almos a year now. I'm building my own kitchen cabinets with rough sawn lumber and have thrown a lot of wood through it. I had the re-adjust the in and out feed rollers a couple of time (less protrusion than factory). For snipe I ended up setting the tables flat (not winged like my old lunch box). The out rollers did leave bad marke to start. After resetting the roller height, taking a rub of abrasive to them, and running lumber through they seem to have lessened (tension did nothing for me - I think I heard one tension screw is at a different height due to the torque of the drive system. Also, I put a digital readout on it without any drilling: http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthre...ighlight=wixey , but, I still cary some calipers to make sure it is correct. Plus the beauty of milling your own lumber is even if it's off by a bit as long as the final cut is made at the same setting all the stock will be the same.

Mike