Grizzly G0609 Jointer Review

I bought my Grizzly G0609 Parallelogram Jointer with 4 Knife Cutterhead, 12-Inch a few months ago, in late September 2013, so this review will, by necessity, only speak of my experiences so far, as of early December 2013.

Brace yourself. It starts out rough, but it gets better. Keep reading.

Delivery

Delivery was stressful. My house is on a narrow curved road and my driveway is quite steep. Getting the crate off the truck was a terrifying experience. It was poorly loaded into the truck in the first place. The openings for the pallet jack were on the side, so we had to remove a bunch of other pallets to gain access. The truck itself was ill equipped to deal with the terrain. The crate almost fell off the lift gate a few times and if we hadn't managed to find a parking angle that leveled the truck's floor we wouldn't have succeeded. 1000 lbs out of control on a slope isn't my idea of fun. The one good thing about this experience was the driver's attitude and competence. His employer failed to supply him with the correct tools for the job, in my opinion, but he worked with what he had and completed the task at hand without injury or damage to the equipment.

When the carrier called to confirm the delivery time, I had requested a fork lift truck. That's how other companies have delivered lumber and shingles to my house in the past. The carrier agreed, verbally. However, despite my request, the driver only had a pallet jack when he arrived. He did, however, go out of his way to do the job right. He even helped manuever the crate down my driveway, quite against the terms of the delivery contract. I really lucked out with that guy.

Why am I complaining about delivery in a product review? Well, I think it's a little like being married. They don't give you a choice. After you buy this jointer, Grizzly sends you an email explaining how it will be delivered. You have the option to opt out, but you don't have a choice of delivery carriers or methods. The option to pay a little more for a truck with a forklift would really make everyone's life easier here. Be aware of this when purchasing.

Unloading

Getting the jointer off the pallet was a journey all of it's own. I opened a thread in a popular woodworking forum to chronicle the process with many photos and details:

How to Move a 1035lb Jointer Off a Pallet Yourself Without a Crane

The short story was that I didn't have room for a cherry picker (engine crane), so I used simple levers, pivots, and black iron pipe to ease and roll and lever the machine off it's pallet and safely onto my garage floor. It took a couple of days to think through the process and execute it. Don't expect this step to be trivial unless you already own or have access to a cherry picker, or other heavy crane, and have the space to safely utilize it.

Cracked Fence

My G0609 arrived with a cracked cast iron fence. Well, not the fence itself, but the piece that attaches the fence to the jointer and allows it to slide back and forth across the table. I think it's part number 209.

I called Grizzly and requested a replacement part. They shipped it out promptly and free of charge. I have to give them credit for that. Their customer service was excellent. However, once it arrived, I realized I had no way to remove the various metal pins and interference fit parts that mated with my broken part.

I called Grizzly again and a tech support representative recommended I buy a set of brass punches. Brass punches aren't readily available in hardware stores anymore, as far as I can tell. Grudgingly, I bought a set from Amazon: Starrett SB565Z Brass Drive Pin Punches Set, 8 Pieces. The punches arrived and I went to work tapping out the various interference fit parts. Ugh. Some of the parts had been deformed during installation and were impossible to remove.

I called Grizzly again and requested replacements for the parts I could not remove, explaining that I bought brass punches and had little luck removing them myself. The replacement parts were again shipped promptly and free of charge. I really have to praise Grizzly for that. I was in a tight spot and they helped me out of it. My only bit of advice would be to suggest that Grizzly offer to ship the additional parts, up front, as a kit or assembly. I doubt most woodworkers own a brass punch set, and Grizzly should recognize that fact and respond accordingly.

At this point, at least a month had passed since delivery. That was frustrating. I just wanted to use the jointer. However, finally, it was fully operational and I got to run it through it's paces without any damaged parts.

Now for the real review of the product itself:

Dust Collection

Shortly after unpacking the machine, I noticed the dust collection requirement in the user manual. A shop vac will not do. I guess I was a little surprised by this fact. The manual lists a CFM requirement that is waaaay above what shop vacs are capable of delivering. I don't think you can get away with not using dust collection. It's mandatory. The way the machine is designed, I think you'll damage or jam it if you don't have a dust collector. For example, I jointed a few boards of pine without a DC and my dust chute was thoroughly clogged afterward.

In hindsight, the assumption that a shop vac would be adequate was due to my personal inexperience with this level of woodworking equipment. The G0609 is a serious machine. It's big and heavy, not a toy. I wouldn't recommend it for the casual woodworker. It stands to reason that the G0609 requires a bigger DC.

I had already been looking at the Harbor Freight dust collection machine, so when I realized I would actually need a real DC for the first time, I just went out and bought that one. It was fairly inexpensive at about $300 for the DC and the hose kit. I brought it home and assembled everything, only to realize that the dust port on the jointer is a 5" port. The Harbor Freight hoses are 4".

I did some research and bought a pre-made cut-to-fit Big Horn 11600 6-Inch By 1-Inch Universal Adapter for about $20. It's a black plastic stepped pipe, with various diameters from 6" down to 1". When it arrived, I clamped it in my workbench and cut off the sections I did not need using a hacksaw. Now I had a male 5" to 4" adapter. The 4" section fit the Harbor Freight hose, but how should I connect the 5" male section to the 5" male port on the jointer?

I did more research. I went to a bunch of big box stores looking for 5" pipe. Nobody had it. Eventually I lucked out at Ace Hardware. They had some galvanized 5" stove pipe. It had a little gap where the joint was, but it worked well enough. I taped both ends and called it a day. In hindsight, I probably should have just skipped the stove pipe and used tape to join the two male ends. I didn't do it that way because I thought I might want to remove the DC hose frequently for alternating use with the jointer and planer. I wanted a solid permanent mounting point. After using the machines for a couple of months, I decided it was a huge pain to remove the hose and not worth the trouble. Instead, I installed two blast gates and left the hoses permanently connected.

So yeah, that 5" dust port is an awkward, hard to find size, but it works fine once you find the parts you need.

First Cuts

Finally, repairs aside, I had the opportunity to joint some red oak and pine. Unfortunately, I nicked a blade on the red oak because I tried to remove too much material in one pass. Undeterred, I decided to sharpen the set of four jointer blades on my Tormek with the Tormek SVH-320 Planer/Jointer Blade Jig. I planned to buy this jig to sharpen my own blades anyway, so I wasn't too bent out of shape about it. I even checked the blade weight in grams to ensure proper balance, using this micro scale: American Weigh Scales AWS-600-BLK Digital Personal Nutrition Scale, Pocket Size, Black and calibration weight: American Weigh Scales 500WGT 500 Gram Calibration Weight

The nicked blades were another thing I could blame, in hindsight, on having been an inexperienced operator. However, it would have been nice if the depth gauge on the infeed table of the machine had increments less than 1/8".

The photo above shows the metric scale opposite the SAE scale. The metric scale has more resolution, but the SAE scale only has 1/8" increments. I NOW understand that 1/8" is way, way too much material to remove in one pass, unless you want to nick a blade as I did. Annoying, and counter intuitive, but now that I know it shouldn't be a problem.

Soft Outfeed Table Lock

Earlier, as I was squaring the tables, I noticed the outfeed table lock was extremely soft. (I assume in this paragraph that the lock is a nut of some kind inside the machine.) I worried it may have been damaged because it allowed the left table height adjustment wheel to turn while the table was locked. I cranked away on the adjustment handle for a while before I realized something was wrong. A bit of hunting and reading in the manual pointed out that the outfeed table was normally locked and must be unlocked in order to be adjusted. This could be written off as inexperienced operator error. However, it would have been nice if that feature locked the table positively and allowed zero movement of the adjustment wheel. The mushy movement it allowed was bad. It tricked me. I thought the wheel was just hard to turn. I'm a fairly careful guy. I doubt others will be so cautious with the machine. I could easily see the machine damaged by someone who didn't know about this quirk.

Flimsy Control Panel Mast

What else? The control button mast's weld was quite flimsy. The mast was made from square tubing and it looked like the factory only welded two sides, and poorly at that.

It could be wiggled quite a bit with a light touch. When the buttons were pushed the mast would move quite a bit from the pressure, giving the buttons an inaccurate feel and sometimes preventing function. This discovery was annoying and unexpected on a tool in this price range.

That pretty much sums it up. Oh, one final note, then the conclusion:

Debunking the Dragging Fence Myth

I've read a lot of complaints from owners of this machine stating that the fence scraped the table. I think these people have their machines set up incorrectly. Here's the procedure that worked for me: When setting the tables to be square and parallel to each other and the knives, the outfeed table should be set slightly lower than the fence ledge. This way, the fence can be set to 90 degrees while it is OFF THE TABLE on it's ledge. The fence ledge should be slightly higher than the tables. When the fence is locked at 90 degrees and moved out across the table it should have a nice air gap between it and the table. My fence, set up in this manner, does not scrape the table. However, note that I did have to adjust my tables first. They were nowhere near parallel or set to the right height out of the crate. The manual says they should be parallel from the factory, but that was not the case with my machine.

Conclusion:

The G0609 seems to be a hard working, full featured, budget, 12" cast iron jointer. Yes, that's right. I think this machine, though expensive from a hobbyist perspective, is in the budget section of it's category. It has nice long tables and heavy cast iron construction. In my mind, this puts it a step above the short tabled combo machines that are popular today, so long as you have room to accommodate the extra floor space requirements. My G0609 lives in my garage. When I need to joint something long, I simply open the garage door for extra infeed clearance.

The motor seems strong and the hardware seems to work as intended. In general, the machine does not seem particularly high end. Some aspects of the machine are a bit on the cheap end of the quality spectrum. I'm not sure how reliable it would be in a big production shop jointing 24/7. However, I'm hopeful that it will serve me well for light to medium duty use. Due to my customer service experience to date, I'm confident Grizzly will stand by their product and provide me with inexpensive replacement parts should anything go wrong.

Don't forget to leave room in your budget for a dust collection system. On the cheap, the Harbor Freight DC works fine for about $350 in 2013 with discounts and adapters factored in. Also, consider a Tormek or Grizzly wet grinder and a jointer knife sharpening jig. Alternatively, consider a Byrd Tool H9291 12" Shelix Cutterhead . Nicks happen and knives lose their edge over time. It helps to think ahead.

I'm giving this machine four stars instead of five for some obvious flaws in quality and poor delivery execution. Four stars is still pretty good, in my opinion, and I'd buy this machine again. I'd recommend it to friends, but only if I thought they were highly technical and competent mechanics. I'm not sure a non technical user would be happy with this machine. I don't think it's a "jointer for dummies", so to speak. It's a fairly serious machine that will do real work, if you treat it right.

Hopefully I can provide an update in a few months/years when I've logged more hours and have accumulated considerable operator experience.