FWW Done it Now! Just read the grizz review.

[Dev Emch]

Well kiddies, guess what? Its a combo of being to darn busy and to darn lazy to renew my FWW subscription. So I just wait until safeway has it in the check out mag racks and I snag it when it time to scarf grocerys.

I just went through the 8 inch jointer review and my skin is itching something bad. Here are my issues with this review.

1). No grading scale was listed so we have no concrete grades to examine. The process of evaluation was extremely poor and is totally devoid of any true obejective, repeatable process. A number of examinination points were brought up but somehow, the author managed to wiggle the grizz machine into the lead spot.

He did mention the fact that the DJ-20 had an "anti-splintering" feature. This is how he referred to the parallogram system. A total of no more than 4 sentences. The major advangages were not even covered or hinted at.

2). He then listed the flatness and parallel numbers for each jointer. In his technique, he said that he had used a "high quality" 36 inch straight edge and feeler gage. Nothing more was said. I would like to know a few things. First of all, what was the straight edge he was using? Was it a hunk of hot rolled steel or a real straight edge from companies like Strarret or Brown & Sharpe. Second, how did he measure flatness? This is not just one measurement. And the number listed were "averages". Averages of what? No other methods or follow up data was listed.

Then he has the numbers listed by thousandths. Jointers like the Delta DJ-20 had 0.001 inch out of flat. And only one jointer had perfect tables.. you guessed it, the grizz with 0.000 in out of flat. ONLY ONE!

His measurement was based on trying to slip a one thou feeler gage under the straight edge. This is total rubish. First of all, if you pluck a hair off your head and measure it, it is about 3 thousandths thick. Go ahead and try it! That is 0.003 in thick. Or in the case of the sunhill jointer, the amount its tables were out of flat.

Most micrometers are setup to measure at best ONE THOUSANDTHS of an inch. I have a couple I ordered new from starrett that measure in 10ths of ONE thousadths of an inch. These do this by using a special 10ths vernier scale. ONE TENTH is 0.0001 inches thick. Most metal lathes could not hold this tolererance if their lives depended on it. Folks, this is aerospace territory!

But our author must be using some special tools he did not tell us about. In the case of table alignment, there are no less than FOUR jointers in which he was able to accurately measure the table alignment to 10ths. Not thousanths of an inch but 10ths of ONE thousandths of an inch. And all this with nothing more than a non descript straight edge and a bunch of feeler gages.

This is pure rubish. BUNK. Fairy Tales. Holloween Stories. Campfire Legends.

Can you measure a surface to this level of accuracy? Of course you can. The hard core machine builders to this all the time. But they are equipped to do it. They often use a device called an AUTO-COLLIMATOR. The early ones and some of the finest ones made are by companies like NIKON and LEIKA and LEITZ. They use prisims and other optic tricks to measure how a reflected beam of light is moved on its receipt to the instrument. The light bounces off special optic devices made for this purpose. Look in the back of the starrett catalog and check out those funky optic glass thingies. Things like "TRUE SQUARES" and "OPTICAL POLYGONS" and "OPTICAL FLATS". This is how you measure parallellism to 10ths of an inch.

And of course, the grizz came out with a totally perfect 10 out of 10 score. A guy who is measureing 4 of the 11 jointers to within 10ths must be able to measure the grizz to within 10ths as well. That would be 0.0000 inchs. Or could that be +/- 0.00005 inches. So that would be accuracy in which the variation is now on the order of 100ths of 1 thousandths of an inch.

So Mr. Duckworth, unless your nickname is warlock, there is no way you could have produced accurate test results and I can only conclude that you entered this competition with the intent of promoting the grizzley jointer. Your coverage of the other jointers was rather poor and your scientific method was basicly non existant. Had this been an engineering lab report, I would have docked you about 3 letter grades.

Better try next time..... I guess its a buyer beware market out there.

[Vaughn McMillan]

C'mon Dev, tell us how you really feel.

I know from experience that product comparisons can be done to favor whoever the tester wants, if they try hard enough. If the .0001 tolerances weren't an editing error, sounds like they must have been smoke and mirrors.

- Vaughn

[Martin Shupe]

This sounds similar to the scientific method in the varnish article a few months back. Every product was applied the same way, instead of according to their individual directions, then compared. Minwax wipe on poly came out on top. I used a Minwax poly once, and swore I would never use one again.

I still like FWW overall, but their product reviews are rapidly losing credibility.

[John Lucas]

Dev,
All very interesting, but I have one question: "Why do you pick such a slow checkout line at the Safeway." I can barely read the sexy magazines in that time.

More seriously, I dont remember an FWW "test review: that I have been able to trust and follow. I havent read my copy yet, but I bet I will just gloss over the review. These are the same people who developed "scientific tests" using a straight bit in a CNC machine and pushing it until it failed. Poor Jesada at the time. And poor readers who dont have a CNC machine. And their test of joint strengths... "two biscuits are stronger than one". Then why not 6?

Thanks for your review of the FWW review. I enjoyed it, until it got to taking a strand of my hair and...

[Dev Emch]

Martin, dito dito. My eyes glazed over when I saw the negative press for the tried and true products. How does one manage to screw up a traditional varnish oil which has a heavy hitting following including the likes C.H.Becksvort? For me, poly is akin to wraping a hard won piece in cellopane packing tape.

[Dev Emch]

One more point worth pointing out. My first reaction to the review was that the price ceiling was established to exclude the DJ-20. As it turns out, I was wrong. Way wrong. The DJ-20 can now be had for less than its listed here in the review.

So I have thought about this tonight or this morning and I can come to only one conclusion. The standard imports are all there. The grizz is there. Even two examples of the Delta line is present including the venerable DJ-20. The powermatic is also present. Sooooooo, who is missing? Who is the no show? Or should this last sentence read as follows... Who is the no show, EHHH?

Thats right, the Drumondville gang! That bunch up north who plaster maple leaves on their machines.... GENERAL of CANADA. But their domestic local costs well over $1400 dollars these days. So that is how you eliminate the other major competition.

Now I can understand why I dont refill my FWW subscription. Its like a cavity that you just cannt leave alone with your tounge. Overall, there is enough good reading to warrent the purchase but these product reviews are going to need a major redo with an injection of pure objectivity and scientific method.

[John Bailey]

Dave,

All good points, but your conclusion is as much conjecture as what you say FWW did with their conclusion. With everything you said, it still could be the Grizz was the best. I read these reviews as opinion only. No matter what the method of testing, one can find different results in another reveiw. I don't think FWW intentionally stacked the deck, that would not be in their interest. However, because they're human, their own opinions and prejudices can slant what they see. They have put their neck on the line knowing full well some will disagree. I can't fault them for that and I get lots of good information from the reviews. But, I keep them in perspective.

As for me, I'm building a shop and that's where all my money is going right now. I can't get my heart rate up for any of the new products, but my heart sank when I didn't have the cash to bid on a beautiful old Walker-Turner jointer on e-bay, or the 20" Northfield bandsaw, or the Walker-Turner 16" bandsaw, or the... Well, you get the idea. I read the magazine articles and enjoy them. I make up my own mind.

John

[Frank Pellow]

Thanks for your review of the review process Dev. I have a scientific background (BSC), so am interested in comparative testing processes and I have seldom found a testing process in these magazines that was well enough explained for my liking. I know that the level of testing process detail that I would like to see would bore the majority of people, but it would improve creditability if a magazine were to make this information available on-line.

[Richard Wolf]

As it turns out, I was wrong. Way wrong.

Say it ain't so!! Dev admits he was wrong.
Actually, your response to the review reminds me of an old story about a fox and grapes!

Richard

[Ernie Hobbs]

I, too, have been more than disappointed by the wasted pages that FWW has devoted to product reviews lately. I can't recall one in the last year or so that was actually useful. However, on this particular issue, they more than made up for it with the Federal Card Table by Steve Latta. I am inspired to give it a try this winter.

[Chris Barton]

Hi Dev,

First, as a medical professional let me make a suggestion, cut back on the coffee or switch to decaf. Second, why is there always a conspiracy out there when the results are not as you would have chosen? As Freud once said, "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." I honestly think that the reviewer was not delusional and believed that folks would consider his findings in the spirit they are offered. Which was basically, "well, here they are folks, this is what I think." Lastly, Dev, wheather you want to fess up to it or not, you seem to have a serious bias related to this issue. That would seem to put you in the same regard you appear to have for the reviewer; lacking credibility. Unless you are going to run the same kind of comparisons how can you take such a strong stand in condeming them?

[Donnie Raines]

I have not seen the review. But, I for one really don't care about all of the details...I would not(likely) comprehend the means by which they were tested any how. I am a smart guy...but in this case the details don't bother me. Jointers are pretty simple machine...most easily adjustable if needed. All I care about is the fence being sqaure and the tables being true...thats it. If this is all in line the results will be very similar(if not the same). Why would I need a much more expensive jointer to accomplish this???..not sure. Thats up to the individual to decide.

Also, in my line of work, I have met many of people. To the tee, those that study things beyond need always over think the situation, thus making it more complicated then things often are. I have doctors and engineers walk through the door with all of the book smarts in the world...but not one drop of common sense. Are they stupid....not at all. Again, things are often over thought.

Now a finishing review is diffrent in my mind. Here you do have more things going on. Each company has their own brew(though often they are very similar) thus a more formal test is just.

Now...is the Delta DJ series a better made jointer then the Griz....most likely so(I hope so for the cost diffrence). But if they yeild the same results, is one better then the other????Hmmmmmmm

[JayStPeter]

Hmmmm, speaking of preconceived outcome ... I'd hate to see the article written by Dev.

[Craig Zettle]

BTW, I was under the impression the DJ-20 is an imported machine. True?
Also, the video that accompanies the article is pretty good, kind of down home type of review. To the best of my knowledge, there were no USA machines in the survey.

The best part of the survey for me was the conclusion drawn regarding spiral cutterheads. (not worth the expense for the average woodworker on a budget). In the video he even made a comparison cut to show that the difference is negligable. Keeps me from thinking the world is passing me by if I don't get one.

[Mike Cutler]

Hmmmm, speaking of preconceived outcome ... I'd hate to see the article written by Dev.

Actually, I'd really like to see a review by Dev. I believe it would at least be based on practical assumptions and validated with purely mathematical basis.

Aside from that folks. If I may interject a little testing methodology and standards usage.
First off. FWW does not even begin to have the budget to be able to test these jointers, nor probably, would anyone here on the board have the ability.
Our test and measurement facility, here at works has a ventilation system that cost over 400K, to maintain temperature and humidity within the standards specified by NIST. The mechanical room cost almost 1 million, this is the room that straight edges, auto collimators, verniers, and even the lowly feeler gauge are calibrated to traceable standards. Add another 500K for measurement standards, and an additional budget to send your standards out for certification, to a more expensive, better equiped lab, and you can quickly see that anything aside from testing these jointers in a similar equipped lab would always leave room for discussion.
Dev's assesment of the measured values is correct, even applying ISA( Instrument Society of America) protocol, you would not be able to arrive at these values, ergo I am giving the magazine the benefit of the doubt and calling them typo's. These are writers, not mathematicians . However Dev, there is a technique that would allow you to expand the capabilityy of the lowly feeler gauges to derive a smaller, more accurate, and more resolute value, but I doubt that it was used. It's time consuming and requires the use of a vernier.
Bottom line though. I don't think that the FWW was trying to promote one brand over the other. All of these machines are relatively inexpensive, even though they would be a mortgage payment for a lot of folks, they still are inexpensive, all things considered. If you are looking for Bridgeport accuracy out of woodworking machine, be prepared to spend a lot of $$$, and don't be dissatisfied when you don't get it. In Dev's case I believe that his time investment allows him to maximaze the quality of the machine by the aftermarket machining and mod's that he has outlined in his posts.
Testing methodologies by any magazine or vendor is always a little subjective to me because I know that they are probably not set up to test properly, but as my machinist friends say about woodworking machine tolerances." What difference does it make, the wood will be a different size tommorrow"