Jointer questions here and there, jointer questions everywhere!

[Mark Henshaw]

As an owner of a 12" Grizzly J/P with a carbide helical cutter, I would certainly recommend it for the serious hobbyest. It replaced an 8" HSS knife jointer and a Dewalt 12" lunchbox planer. For questions in your original post,
1) I feel the carbide head is a large improvement over the HSS knives. 800 - 900 board ft of hardwood through it without a noticeable dulling of the head. Having the J/P combo allows for the head to be used for both jointing and plaining. In Dec I ran some very figured 8" - 11" curly maple boards through the jointer and planer functions with very little to no pull out.

2) You are correct that the J/P limits the length of of the jointer bed and this is indeed something to be considered before purchase. Edge jointing is never an issue but face jointing 10' and longer boards can be tiring. Thankfully the longer boards is a small part of what I work with.

3) Over the last 1 1/2 years the grizzly machine has performed well and done everything I have asked of it. Short of the beds warping or motor failure, I do know of anything that could go wrong with it that I could not fix. Before purchasing, I looked at all of the models on the market and picked the one I felt offered the most value (bang for the buck).

4) I have used the 12" jointer width more then I thought I ever would. Once you have the capability, it is hard to go back to the 8" or 6".

Just my 2 cents...

Mark

[David Kumm]

Jonathan, I agree that just because something costs more it isn't necessarily better. The variation in quality for machines though only holds true within a fairly narrow range. An $800 machine might be higher quality than someone elses $900 or $1000 machine and an $8000 machine might be better than another $8500 machine but you can't compare quality when the price gets much farther apart. Ultimately the market will crucify the companies that don't offer appropriate value. Look at the auto industry. You can compare an Audi to a BMW but not to a Chevrolet. some of the comparisons on this forum are about that far apart. The Chev might work just fine but that doesn't mean the components are of as high a quality. For a Grizzly to be built to the same standards as a Martin it would have to be priced much closer to a Martin. Lexus started out somewhat lower than Audi until the market was convinced of its quality and now it is priced higher. Dave