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.