I'm starting to look at what 8" jointer I want to get. Everyone raves about the parallelogram style, and one is definitely in the budget of it's worth the extra cost. My biggest concern though is getting it into the basement. Ideally I'd remove the tables and carry it piece by piece down the stairs - stand, motor, indeed, outfeed, fence, and the middle with the cutterhead in it. A whole lot easier to manage going down the stairs as opposed to a big 500 lb hunk of cast iron.
I've seen the videos on YouTube of removing the tables from a dovetail setup. I've seen the videos of setting up a dovetail and a parallelogram jointer. Yea, the parallelogram sure seems nicer in that it's designed to adjust and you're not shimming, but I haven't seen the tables removed off one, and all I could find on google was another forum post saying it'd be a lot hard to remove those tables vs a dovetail jointer. The way I see it, I'm either going to have to put in the work setting up a dovetail and possibly shimming it, or I'm going to have to put in the work disassembling and reassembling the parallelogram to get it down the stairs. So I might as well save a few hundred and get the dovetail.
Right now the machines I'm looking at are the grizzly g0490x and the g0656. I know the cutterheads are different, but the extra cost of the spiral for the g0656 is more than just buying a shelix, so I figured the cutterhead upgrade can wait.
The other thing I'm not seeing is aside from country of manufacture and the mobile base, what's the difference between the 490/656 and the 855/857?
Finally, aside from grizzly, is there anything else in a similar category/price point I should be looking at? It seems like they have the market cornered for high quality imports where anything nicer you're looking at a USA made machine with a much bigger price tag. As much as I'd like a powermatic, I don't think I can justify the additional cost for a machine when I won't be using it to it's full potential.
I've seen the videos on YouTube of removing the tables from a dovetail setup. I've seen the videos of setting up a dovetail and a parallelogram jointer. Yea, the parallelogram sure seems nicer in that it's designed to adjust and you're not shimming, but I haven't seen the tables removed off one, and all I could find on google was another forum post saying it'd be a lot hard to remove those tables vs a dovetail jointer. The way I see it, I'm either going to have to put in the work setting up a dovetail and possibly shimming it, or I'm going to have to put in the work disassembling and reassembling the parallelogram to get it down the stairs. So I might as well save a few hundred and get the dovetail.
Right now the machines I'm looking at are the grizzly g0490x and the g0656. I know the cutterheads are different, but the extra cost of the spiral for the g0656 is more than just buying a shelix, so I figured the cutterhead upgrade can wait.
The other thing I'm not seeing is aside from country of manufacture and the mobile base, what's the difference between the 490/656 and the 855/857?
Finally, aside from grizzly, is there anything else in a similar category/price point I should be looking at? It seems like they have the market cornered for high quality imports where anything nicer you're looking at a USA made machine with a much bigger price tag. As much as I'd like a powermatic, I don't think I can justify the additional cost for a machine when I won't be using it to it's full potential.
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