I am amateur woodworker and limited with computer forum too, so here goes…
I am considering giving up my old Grizzly 15″ G1021 planer for a
spiral cutter head model. I haven’t heard much about the spiral
heads except the ad material. What can you tell me about the pros
and cons?
Thanks
Replies
Welcome to Knots.
I'm surprised you haven't gotten any responses yet. I just installed a Shellix head in my Delta planer. I haven't done enough with it to give you a real experienced opinion. You can try the search functions using "shellix", "spiral cutterhead", etc. as the criteria & locate some of the previous discussions here on this topic. Another thing to do is go to the Amazon web site, look up the planer you're thinking of purchasing & get the customer reviews (Amazon does list the Grizzly products, also).
The ad material is right on the money. The Byrd Shelix head is better then the Asian spiralheads, but not that much better. I have experience with both and they are worth every penny. I have yet to turn the cutters on my planer or my jointer in 4 years with a lot of use. They are quieter and do a much better job on curly grained woods, very little tearout. The 3 machines I would look at are Extrema, Grizzly and Powermatic.
I have the P 20". I haven't used it enough to tell you how it works but I can tell you it makes a bare fraction of the noise of the PM jointer with conventional blades. The jointer literally screams.
This forum post is now archived. Commenting has been disabled