G0490X 8″ Jointer w/ Spiral Cutterhead
mbcabinetmaker
| Posted in Power Tools and Machinery on
I am looking for reviews on the G0490X 8″ Jointer w/ Spiral Cutterhead by Grizzly. I have read good things but some complain of railroads or cutter tracks. I talked with a Powermatic rep and they have gone with a radius cutter on their Helix heads to eliminate these problems, but at $2300.00 it is out of my budget. Any help will be appreciated.
Replies
I have the Grizzly G0543 with a spiral cutter head. I have yet to nick a cutter and I run glued up edges that have been glued with Titebond. Titebond on a HSS knife would definitely nick the knife on my old jointer. I have even run some aluminum edges through the Grizzly with no ill effects. Remember you have 4 cutting edges on each cutter and if you need to rotate cutters it is an easy task. Also, I have never noticed any tracks when using the Grizzly. The Byrd Shelix head because of the cutter geometry will leave some tracks or scallops. Some users report no scallops/tracks but Byrd even said that because of the head design you will have some. The carbide cutters are mounted like a helix and have a convex radius on the Byrd head.
http://www.woodweb.com/cgi-bin/forums/furniture.pl?read=515201
Life is what happens to you when you're making other plans .
Edited 3/11/2008 9:58 am ET by JerryPacMan
I have the Byrd Shelix and do not get tracks. It's the greatest thing since sliced bread.
I have the Byrd head on a 15" Planer and I don't get tracks either. That head is the smoothest cutting, quietest head I have ever seen. On a scale of 1-10 it is a 12 !
Bruce
Same here.
Better life through Zoodles and poutine...
6" Jointer with Byrd cutterhead, no tracks here. Jointing Aluminum! Boy, and I get the reputation for being nuts!!Best,John
I just ran some 1/4" aluminum angle iron. Aluminum machines somewhat like wood when using carbide cutters. My friends and family say I am nuts, it must be true.
Life is what happens to you when you're making other plans .
Dear Jerry,
Actually, the machining doesn't worry me so much as the aluminum dust and shards flying around. A speck of sawdust in the eye is one thing, but aluminum wouldn't be too much fun!Best,John
mbcabinetmaker
I know where the railroad tracks thing comes from.
I know some people who have about a 20+year old 24 inch wide planer with helix heads and the little square cutters..
They have a kiln and buy wood rough and plane it when it's dry. Sort of a value added deal.
They are really concerned about costs and at one time took to resharpening the cutters.. if you resharpen them they get slightly smaller leaving those railroad tracks. New cutters solved the problem.
Just imagine how cheap they had to be, those cutters last at least 10 times longer than regular blades do and if you have to resharpen a nicked blade because some grit was on a board all you have to do is rotate one cutter 90degrees to eliminate the nick so I'll bet they get more than 100 times the normal knife life. and they tried to save money on top of that?
Now that's cheap!
You sure they have helical heads???
The older planers didn't have the current carbide insert tooling. Companies like PM, Oliver, Newman had a resharpenable HSS insert. You had to sharpen the insert on the head and it was fairly complicated to do. Newman used to supply the head to other manufacturers and for many it required sending the head in to be sharpened. Oliver and PM had grinders on the machine so you could do it in place. If it was "jointed" correctly it left tracks.
Todays insert tooling was originally used on moulders as a roughing head and certainly did leave tracks.
RickL
absolutely! sure.
It was made in Poland.. and had the replaceable inserts you see today. I cannot swear that they are interchangeable but they sure looked to be.. It looked very similar to Grizzly's G9961
Since you said European I can believe it. They have been leading the way in tooling and other technology for woodworking machinery. American companies were still playing around with staggered tooth tooling. PM version fizzled out. Cn't imagine buying a 24" planer with a Newman head and sending the head out for sharpening. Delta was offering it on their planers years ago. It was the models made in Brazil.
I just purchased the G0490 along with the Byrd Shelix Cutterhead. It was only $75 more than G0490X. The Shelix has 2/3ds more cutters than the Grizzly stock helix cutterhead but had to press the rest block & bearings off of the origional. Took some more time to set up but it was well worth it. Smooth and square. Don't know where you got the $2300 quote, but it's 1150 + shipping.
The $2300 figure probably came from PM or some other make of machine that was confused with the Grizzly.
The 2300 was for the Powermatic 8". That is why I am researching the Grizzly.
My GO 490X 8" Planer just arrived yesterday. Price drove me to this and not the PM. Also considered taking the 490 apart and putting a Byrd, but decided I like wood working more than being a mechanic.
I am setting up a Garage shop I found a nice 6" Glu Lam Beam overhead that supports a second story wall. I have my chain hoist attached and it made setting up this beast a lot easier. You will need lots of frenz or something like it to move it. I unloaded off the UPS tail gate onto a Heavy Duty furniture cart and could roll it into the shop. Plan your unload carefully!
AZMO
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AZMO
Let me know how you like it when you get it fired up. Like you I really don't wont to have to work on a new tool. I may have to pull the trigger soon as I just advertised my 6" Powermatic in the local paper. I wish Grizzly had the option of the byrd head installed.
Yeah I grilled them on that also. Wonderful BS about if they installed the head, the taiwan manufacturer would void the warrenty, but if I did it, the warranty was intact. Now that is the best compliment anyone has ever given me for my mechanical/wrenching abilities. Also have the 15" G1021X2 planer on back order until April 11th ship date. THAT is a real nightmare to switch out to a Byrd. A kind fellow gave me a link to Byrd that showed that switchout... no thanks. I opted for the spiral cutter also.
I will let you know on Monday the results.
AZMO
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Sunhill sells essentially the same range of planers, and they will sell you one with the Shelix head pre-installed. It would be useful to know the REAL reason Grizzly does not do this. Grizzly has the best head price for Shelix that I could find.Bill
My phone call to sales and tech at Grizzly gave me this answer. "If we install the Shelix head, then the warranty is void". Grizzly has the machines made in Taiwan for them. If they switch parts, then the manufacturer in Taiwan will not warranty the machine. However, If I make the switch the warranty is still valid on the machine. So how do they figure I am better qualified to work on their machine than the factory outlet? My guess is they just don't want the hassle and therefore won't offer the service.
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You got it. I went the same route. And because they offer it as an option, the damnn warranty is still good.Having said that, its easy to install.Cheers,Peter
Better life through Zoodles and poutine...
Sorry to be so slow in resonding back, some detours occured....
I had fun getting it setup. I have a tractor with a set of forks so I could get up my steep drive into the shop and set the box on the dolly. I found I had a 6by 12 glu lam above my garage insulating that space. (detours). So I bought a cheap 2 ton chain hoist and made that to lift and set it up with. See the photos attached. I am now about a week behind... I still had to finish with my electrical work, and finally set the new sub panel in the garage and ran my 220 ciruits and hooked it up the weekend.
I have run some hard maple through, 6 in wide and not even a slowup. I also ran some dug fir sitting around with a 3/8" cut. Did not even slow down and the cuts are smooth. I can see small lines across the boards the width of the cutters on the fir, but not on the maple. It is like glass and I was feeding slow and and a thin cut.
I really can't see how the shelix would be better, only the fact that the cutters are skewed slightly for figured wood? The beast came out of the box set up true, I had no adjustments to make, even the pulleys and moter were aligned. Compared to my Delta hyrid saw this is a great purchase.
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AZMO
The fun will come when the blades get dull. What you'll do is put off sharpening untill there is a real problem. Once your ear muffs no longer contain the scream of a dull set of blades pounding on the wood. When you spend more time sanding off the nicks that happen whenever a piece of sand or grit goes thru the planer.
Eventually you'll bite the bullet and pull the blades out to have them sharpened.. Unless you take them to the right sharpening service they will come back sharp but quickly dull again. (look in the yellow pages for printers service. Don't take them where you get your saw blades sharpened. Most places like that really aren't set up to do planer blades and either shop them out to printer service places or do a poor job of it.. Once you get them back you will be shocked at the high cost of sharpening. ($37.50 a set was the cheapest I could get them done well) I found one guy who charged me only $28.00 a set but it wasn't worth it, he must have used a Tormex or something.
You will be tempted to buy one of those sharpening tools and do your own.. From experiance I will tell you don't waste your money.. (Tormek for sale)
The problem is first there is a real skill to doing it and the typical sharpener won't get the blades properly sharp.. They will feel great but in about 1/4 of the time previous you will be resharpening them.. plus you will get a lot more tearout than a new set will give you. and you will get fewer sharpenings than the pros do Worst though the planer will vibrate more since you can't controll the weight of each blade the way they do
Now comes the hassle.
You've got your jig and dial indicator, don't attempt this without one. The first attempt is a real learning curve. Take your time, don't get frustrated and eventually you will do it and every one from that point on will go faster and be better. I've now got it to the point where I can change blades in 45 minutes.. Off course I've been doing so for the past 40,000 bd.ft. of hardwood. Figure somewhere around 50 to 60 times I've changed my blades..
You'll be tempted to do this without the dial indicator.. then you'll see the scalloping that results from just using the jig and note how quickly the blades get dull when just one or two are doing all of the work..
Finally If you've got a powerfull microscope look at the damage that occured to the edge of the blade from the jig and dial indicator. You won't see it in the wood but the sharp edge of the blade is rolled over slightly from the steel of the jig and dial indicator.
I tried the disposable blades route and it's faster but the blades really don't hold up well plus the bottom part of the blade goes on semi dull when you flip them over to use the other side..I eventually did all the rough work with the dull edge and then put a new blade to do the final finish pass on..
Then one of your buddies will have one of those sprial head cutters on his planner and you'll watch him rotate the cutting edge of every cutter inside of about 10 minutes or rotate just a handfull of cutters where that piece of grit nicked a row.
The dope slap you give yourself will be painfill and cause a headache. Then when you see him turn that chunk of burl into this baby butt smooth piece without a hint of tearout you'll hit yourself even harder!
Suddenly you'll note that you aren't wearing earmuffs and it's really not as loud as when you plane with your earmuffs on back at home..
Now that dope slap will probably knock you out.. Caution, you've got one more dope slap coming, well maybe two.. first when you look up what a replacement spiral head will cost you and second when you finally get everything reassembled and ready to run again..
Don't worry, now the pain is over..
=
Frenchy,
I am still howling.... DOH is a great thing in life once. After that it does get a bit stupid.
Sorry but you missed the earlier part of the thread. We were debating the benifits of the Bird Shelix vs. the Grizzley spiral cutter with carbide tips. Grizzly will not install the Bird, you have to do that yourself. So I bought the Griz with their brand of spiral cutter and carbide tips. The only difference I can see is the Griz cutters are square to the work, while the Bird APPEARS to be ever so slightly skewed. Yep I saw that DOH coming and hopefully avoided it. Never did get a response from anyone who has used both to compare, everyone seemed OK with both setups, but a shop like yours with that much board feet of lumber might have a better idea?
So what is wrong with a 747 howling away in my garage anyway... :>)
AZMO <!----><!----><!---->
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AZMO,
Now who gets the dope slap? <grin>
OK, I want you to take that head off and send it over here. In return I'll send you my straight blade head plus all the blades and etc.. and let you enjoy all the experiances I've described while I revel in the pleasure those cutters offer.
I would be ever so greatful.. <really sheepish grin>
(ps they didn't have those when I bought mine or I darn sure would have)
Thanks Frenchy, I will get it boxed up for you soon, real soon. After all what are frenz for. I have been in construction all my life and have a couple of rules for my clients.
If you want something, do it right. Spend the 10 bucks for the right solution. If you spend 5 bucks on the cheap solution, it won't meet your expectation. You will then replace it for 12 bucks since you had to tear out the first mistake. You have now spent 18 bucks (add inflation) for the 10 dollar item. I always buy for myself with that in mind. I think the Griz will work great for my current needs for years to come.
You made my morning Frenchy.
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azmo,
I'll be holding my breathe,,
Um, I'm getting pretty blue,,
Phew,, well maybe not hold my breath but..........<grin>
You must not have read my earlier post on this thread. I have the Taiwan spiralheads in my 12" jointer and my 20" planer. I replaced a Delta DJ-20 8" jointer with a Byrd Shelix. We pressed in new bearings and installed the Byrd. The Byrd is a LITTLE better than the Taiwan cutterheads, but not that much. I would never buy a new machine and retrofit a 3-knife cutterhead with a Byrd. If you can't get a Byrd initially and you can get the Taiwan cutterhead, get it. You definitely made the right decision. Frenchy's description brought back many not so fond memories. Never heard of a printer service doing blades, makes sense, though, they sharpen those big paper shears.
Terrylee86,
Sorry missed that post, it was right there...As frenchy does a great head slap DOH, I will let him apply it. His post was hilarious wasn't it. Dang what a story.
Nice to hear you have a had a chance to compare the difference between the Bird/Byrd Shelix and the taiwanese. In contacting Grizz tech support twice, they could not tell any funcitional difference either. I suspect either will be more than adequate for my needs. My 15" planer arrives Wed and I will drag the tractor off the job site to huck it up the drive to my house.
AZMO <!----><!----><!---->
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Nice setup! You will love the tool for sure. I'm sure the thought of the shelex will be more apparent when you do your first shapening. Enjoy!Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
Thanks Bones, a work in progress. You can see my paint marks on the wall for the electrical that is complete. Nice remote to turn on the DC located outside the shop, no lost heat here in Phoenix. The PVC 6" piping works great on my Delta 1.5 hp collector, I have some access panels to make in clear acrylic to view the passage. More pics later...
AZMO <!----><!----><!---->
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AZMO
That looks like quite an undertaking. I see you went with the GO586. I placed my order for the GO490X on 3/24. I had decided to splurge and go with the new G0495X, however when I called to place the order I found it would be back ordered until the end of May and I have to have a jointer now!!! UPS/OVERNIGHT delivered what was left of it on 3/27. Boxes were badly damaged as well as the crate that contained the head stock. After a call to Grizzly to file a claim they told me to try to assemble and access damage. Their customer service is great and they offered to send any parts that I would need. The manual must have been lost during the war at UPS so assembly was slow until my Wife downloaded one from the Grizzly sight.
Now it is together and I've found only cosmetic damages that I'll live with. During the process the belt that came with the unit was the wrong size. Also the set screws that lock down the parallelogram adjustments were not even hand tight. This makes me wonder what else is not tight that I cannot see or check. I had to grind the bottom of the fence to be able to adjust it from rubbing the table and it is out of square about 10 thousands on the very end of the outfeed side.
On the plus side the cut quality is excellent and the tables seam to be within tolerance but If I had a do-over I would buy the Powermatic.
I hope your Grizzly experience is a better one.
Sorry to hear about your sad arrival. Shipping is a risky thing. My boxes as you can see in the photos were unscathed. I purchased the GO593 with the spiral head and not the 586. Everything was simple out of the box, all the bolts etc. I do not have a registered straight edge to verify the accuracy so that I can not attest to its accuracy. Fence is square to the table up and down the length. My only complaint may be the cutter guard, it is very close to the blades, and I would like it just a bit higher. As things wear, they tend to sag, so I suspect at somepoint it may be an issue.
I have GO453Z 15" planer coming on Tuesday, and I am crossing my yard arms the package is tight also.
I had a nightmare of a problem with Delta and Hybrid TS. That is wish I had researched more, and looked at the PS. It works, but I am afraid I may grow tired of it. It was a major hassle to get set up square with the table, over 1/4" out and it required two trips from a rep to get it set correct.
Later
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mbcabinetmaker.
I've ordered 11 major pieces from Grizzly and just like you my first purchace arrived after having fought a major war in trucking.. The crate was in splinters and even castings were busted..
The next day I had every single piece I asked for and it took me all of 45 minutes to assemble.
40,000 bd.ft. later & nearly 7 years that 8 inch jointer still has yet to need it's first part..
In fact in all my equipment I've only needed to buy one $5.00 fan belt when one of three gave up the ghost.. (no I didn't replace all three) in my 20 inch planer..
Maybe if I hadn't run so many 20 foot long 6"x9" white oak timbers through it that day I wouldn't have even broken that one..
Every other piece came out of the box perfect and has never needed adjustment.
Frenchy
I respect a man that rides for the brand. I used the jointer today gluing up about 30 panels for some furniture pieces. It works great , smooth and steady. All boards came out perfert. I'll be 100% happy with it if it holds its adjustments. Just got spooked when I found the loose adjustment screws. You won't beat the service from Grizzly.
If you can get the Byrd head for only $75 more through Grizzly I would do that if you feel comfortable pressing in the bearings. It is not that difficult and you can get USA bearings and your machine would last a lot longer. That said, I have a spiral planer and a spiral jointer and I have the Taiwan heads and love them. I put a Byrd Shelix in my old DJ-20 and it is a better unit but not light years difference.
The railroad tracks you have heard about are the knife patterns you can see on the wood if you angle it to the light. You cannot feel them but they leave that image coming off the machine. I start sanding with 150 grit because the finish off the spiralheads is so smooth. If you nick a few knives with a nail and you just rotate the knife, you will get visible tracks because the wear is not accounted for. What the service guy at Wilke told me to do is move the knives from the outside edge of the head to the chipped area and rotate the new edge to the outside.
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