Am considering the 15″ Grizzly planer; anyone had hands-on experience with one? I’ll be building all the doors and jambs for my house out of mostly South American hardwoods, so I need more oomph than the cute 13″ DeWalt can probably provide. My Griz experience includes both the worst power tool I’ve ever known (16″ drum sander) and the most reliable (big dust collector), so I’m concerned. It’s too heavy to return easily.
TIA
Butch
Austin, TX
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Replies
Butch, you might trying posting this over at Knots, they may be able to help out as well if not more so with your question.
I recently bought a 10" cabinet saw (I named her Grizzelda)
Verry Satisfied!!
I am longing for the new 15" planer also.
but alas the budget priorities are elswhere...
next year, or when I get a Job that will justify the expense...
Hes a real nowhere man
Sitting in his nowhere land
Making all his nowhere plans for nobody
Doesnt have a point of view
Knows not where hes going to
Isnt he a bit like you and me?
Nowhere man please listen
You dont know what youre missing
Nowhere man, the world is at your command
Hes as blind as he can be
Just sees what he wants to see
Nowhere man, can you see me at all
Nowhere man dont worry
Take your time, dont hurry
Leave it all till somebody else
Lends you a hand
Ah, la, la, la, la
Doesnt have a point of view
Knows not where hes going to
Isnt he a bit like you and me?
Nowhere man please listen
You dont know what youre missing
Nowhere man, the world is at your command
Ah, la, la, la, la
Hes a real nowhere man
Sitting in his nowhere land
Making all his nowhere plans for nobody
Making all his nowhere plans for nobody
Making all his nowhere plans for nobody
T you know damn well the world "justify" is not to be used in context of tool procurement
how about "afford"
or "pay for"
wait til your new wife gets "mommy lust"....
they ALL do...
then you be justifying yer arse off...
I'm Bad, I'm Nation-wide!!
Had one for years.Theyre basically bullet proof. Let me amend that...drop proof ! Made a stand with heavy casters and needed to move it from old lower stand to new one.Dont know what that sucker weighs..300# + but me an another fellar hoisted it off old table and man we could not lift that sucker 6" higher onto new table.We realized we were losing it and i said.."screw it i aint busting a gut for this turkey"..and we let it drop to the concrete floor! Didnt hurt it a bit..as much as I hated doing it..but when ur overextended(as our arms were) ya gotta cut ur loses.
Get the Planer Pals jigs for setting blades....worth every $.
After about 10 yeras i smarted up and took off the little dohicky on infeed side of table that limits depth of cut.Stopped resetting ht. adjustment everytime a board with cup wedged under it.
Roller infeed and out feed tables also needed lil bit of work to line up rite.
Got the big and lil dust collector.Both great but cut grill off on big guy cuz kept on getting clogged with long shavings.
Butch
I worked for a shop down in Austin TX that had a 15" griz planner, it was 9 years old and heavily abused, still worked fine. Have heard a lot of good reports on the 15" grizz planer.
There are a lot of griz tools that I wouldnt touch but the table saw that Mister T mentioned and the 15" planer are both considered good tools. You can go over to knots but you'll be more confused when your done reading all the info, there are a lot of pro griz and just as many anti griz people over there.
Doug
Pro-griz and con-griz is me! The worst power tool I've ever known is their 16" drum sander; at this point, I think there's some of the original paint left but that's all. The failures were sequential, so over the years I just kept rebuilding and replacing rather than the obvious dynamite solution. OTOH, their dust collector has been flawless and seen some serious duty. I'm using the planer to start breaking away from the older SCMI (now Mini-Max) combo I've been using and cursing. Strong saw, OK shaper but frustrating planer--it chatters on the the right-hand side at random times on any and every kind of wood. Really random. Even paid one of their techs to spend an (expensive) afternoon. It was "cured" until he got back to the shop.Last straw was a missing hold-down clamp. Yep, they had one in stock and since parts prices seemed high, they knocked it down to $147. Enough. I'm getting a SawStop and trying this planer; the rest I'll replace and just buy more wheels. Watch this space for a used MiniMax 5-way combo soon.Thanks for your input. Guess I'm more p*ssed than I realized.Butch
Scattergun Press
Just spent an hour pushing walnut through the Grizzley 8" jointer - solid tool, very flat bed at a very fair price. No problems so far and it's gone through many hundreds of bf of mapte etc.
That looks like a sweet planer - I want one! Of course, if I got that, then I'd have to upgrade to a bigger jointer, and a bigger shop, and a bigger DC and.... sigh...
The main thing that is keeping me from getting the grizz is room!!!
My shop is a 12'x30' converted Garage...
not much room for a stationary planar and a TS
i'd have to do some serious re-arranging...
and find another place for my sheet goods...
a 24'x24' addition would be nice...
but that would make it a 10,000$ planer!!!
I'm Bad, I'm Nation-wide!!
Just to be clear, which 15" planer are you looking at? Grizzly makes 3 of them by my count.
I live about 2 miles from their MO showroom and have played with all 3. If you are thinking about getting the G0477, I would really suggest spending the extra $100 bucks and getting the G0453 unless you really have you heart set on using it as a moulder as well. The 3 knives really is huge difference over the 2 knives.
Then again if you have deep pockets, get spiral head 15" at $1700 and don't look back. The spiral head planer will leave a glass-like surface on about anything. It is the stuff I dream about at night after I have spent the day fooling with my tired DeWalt.
To answer your question though, the G0453 is a very well built machine though I can not attest to it's longevity.
Good luck,
day
It's definitely the G0453 (don't you wonder it that's an OH or a Zero? Don't you really wonder at the folk who create those numbers?). I'll probably just buy a spindle head and make my own shaper, rather than be limited to one brand of cutter. Big routers cover a lot of that for me right now. I'm just running my own stuff here; (a) the volume wouldn't justify the price, and (2) not everything I've heard about the sprial heads has been all that positive. No matter, no planer would do what would be necessary for me to come up the extra $700 (including shipping.) Even planers have morals. ;-)I do have at least a dozen doors to make, and they'll pretty much all be of the South American hardwood, so I'll get a chance to test the machine and my sharpening ability. Anyone tried Griz' disposable blades yet?
I work in a cabinet shop and we have mainly all grizzly. we upgraded from a 15" to 20" so that we could plane door panels down instead of planing narrow boards then gluing then sanding in drum sander. when I first started at the shop we had a grizzly drum sander. that piece of sh** would grab a board from your hand and shoot it into the wall. when it was running you didn't get near the out feed for fear of getting chopped at the knees by a piece of wood. we where only using one roll of paper as well. I hate to see what it would do if we used both rolls of paper.
It was so bad we where at the state fair grounds for a tool show walking up the isle and we hear this guy turn on his sander as soon as he fed the board in all four of us ran to the far wall. it was quite funny at the time. we know have a 36" sander that is white. can't think of the name right know but when we bought it we told the guy that the first piece of wood that it throws he reowns the machine. we still have it.
the grizzly table saw, planer, jointer, band saw, shapers, self feeders are all working good.
we use mainly oak and the blades stay sharp pretty long, when we use hickory we sharpen the blades alot.
FWIW: Besides installing velcro on the one drum ("the round one" we called it) that I kept, I immediately reversed the rotation of the drum. You just can't have a spinning abrasive that pulls the board. It's like feeding a table saw from the wrong end. I also remodeled completely the dust-gathering system; it's still not very good, but much much better than it was. There was so much dust left on the board that the outfeed roller would mash it into the softer woods.I sand as little as possible these days, trying to use had planes and scrapers wherever I can. When I do roll the thing it, it works pretty well. Still a little green paint left, not much else from the original.