Anyone have any comments about these planers ,They look good and aren't to bad a price.
I have a grizzly 8 inch jointer I love as well as a grizzly low budget sharpener I hate but cannot live without
Quote from: Papa1stuff on October 27, 2012, 04:33:51 PM
Anyone have any comments about these planers ,They look good and aren't to bad a price.
I have the Grizzly GO453 15", 3 hp planer. It is a 3-bladed planer since I didn't spend the extra $600 for a spiral head. However, it is a major step up from the benchtops.
I also have a Dewalt DW733 that the Griz replaced. The Grizzly has an induction motor instead of that screaming universal motor that is on the 733. It will take a big bite if you need to remove a lot of material per pass but also leaves a finish that is comparable or better than the 733.
The only thing I dislike is that if you are taking only a skimming cut, it will leave "tracks" fom the infeed rollers. The upside is that the roller doesn't slip like the rubber ones can.
I would definitely buy it again.
I have the Grizzly Polar Bear 3 hp spiral 15 inch. I have had it just over a year and use it to skip plane much of the thousands of bdft of kiln dried lumber that I sell. I also ocasionally contract plane in batches of less than a Mbf per customer. I just planed a thousand bdft of red oak with it in the last two days, no problems. So I use it a lot and it's a good planer, sometimes running for consecutive days nonstop. Reliability has been excellent (pulley bolt and key came out twice) and it has triple v belts that are still in good shape. The carbides last a loooong time and there are inexpensive aftermarket cutter inserts available at low prices. It does need a pretty beefy dust collecter, it pours out the chips so much that I gave up on bagging them and blow them straight into my dump trailer.
YH
Thanks for the replies .the Grizzly Polar Bear spiral 15" is the one I was looking at.
If you don't mind me asking, will you be planing mostly softwood or hardwood? What quantities?
yH
Have both the Grizzly 15" spiral cut planer and 6" spiral cut jointer and love them both
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/21313/Grizzly_Planer.jpg)
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/21313/Grizzly_Jointer.jpg)
Quote from: YellowHammer on October 28, 2012, 08:07:53 AM
If you don't mind me asking, will you be planing mostly softwood or hardwood? What quantities?
yH
I will be doing both hardwood and soft ,not real large quantities .
This whole sawmill thing is kind of a hobby for me .
My Wife thinks I am kind of crazy,she says you are retired ;D
Most all the logs I mill are from the landfill!
I shopped around quite a bit knowing I was was going to push mine pretty hard, but couldn't justify spending the bigger bucks for the heavy duty 5 hp or larger industrial models. Couple tips if you get one, adjust the bed rollers up about .010 above the bed ways and it will allow rough sawn lumber to feed smoother on the first pass. Also it's got a circuit breaker/contacter that was factory set too low and it kept tripping as soon as the motor would load. So I adjusted it up to the max rating of the electic motor and now it'll grunt and power through the cut instead of prematurely tripping. Good luck whichever you decide
YH
I have the GO453Z with the spiral head. I have planed thousands of BF thru it, and it works fine. If I take more than a 1/16" cut in hard wood, the circuit breaker/contacter will trip, and I have to reset it. But, it has not been a major problem.
Yellowhammer, how do you adjust the circuit breaker/contactor???????? That is the only problem that I have had. That thing cuts like a dream.
Ditto on .010 on the bed rollers. Check the rest of the settings when you set the rollers. Found my outfeed roller set at 040 and should have been 020. Sure works better now. Also be aware of the belt pully bolt that was mentioned. Mine fell off too pully and key never moved though. I found it when I went to reset the outfeed roller.
There is a small current limiting pot located inside the little plastic contactor enclosure, just nearby the circuit breaker reset button. If you can see the reset button, you should be abe to see the potentiometer. Around the pot are numbers that correspond to the number of amps the breaker will trip. Use a small flathead screwdriver and dial it up. Make sure the planer is unplugged because all this is where the 220vac is coming in.
I also keep my hand close to the red E-stop button. If you are taking a big cut and hear the motor load up to where it's not going to make it, quickly hit the E-stop button and you will usually keep from tripping the breaker since its at a higher setting. Then just lower the bed a couple turns to unload the motor and switch the planer back on to continue planing the board.
Or just very quickly spin the bed handwheel down to unload the meter without shutting the planer off.
YH
I have the Grizzly GO454Z 20" Spiral cutterhead. It works great.
The 5 HP motor hogs off the wood. I would suggest to anyone in the market for a planer spend the extra money for a carbide spiral cutterhead. It is well worth the extra $$. I have several Grizzly machines and they are good quality.
Thanks again for all your replies,I took the plunge and ordered the 15" Polar Bear Sprial!
What is a fair price just to plane someone"s lumber?
Alright!
I charge $.50/BF, but that is in only little doses. Normally I do not plane wood for people as the 15" Grizzly is not a production machine to say the least. It is all about time and productivity.
Congratulations. 8) Me too, I charge 50 cents a bdft. I don't do big production quantities, but a fair amount of my customers ask me to plane their wood once they buy it and think about feeding it through their lunchbox planer. So it makes me pretty steady money.
Robert
Thanks for the imput!
Hey at my age am not looking to run this machine or my WM all day every day,but maybe once in a while someone would like some boards planned ;D
I timed how long it took me to plane 100 BF and then figured the price using a $/hour # that I was comfortable with.
8) 8)
Congratulations on your new planer! You'll be happy witgh it. :)
I have the 20" Gizzley spiral head and never regretted the purchase. I'm still in the market for a larger dust collector.
When you guys say you will "plane a customers lumber", do you mean planing each side to make it smooth or taking it down to finished thickness?
Danny's right, these are not production machines and alot of time would be spent planing and emptying dust collectors.
I routinely skip plane any FAS grade boards to increase their marketability and price. I take a light cut with the planer to get the lumber to a uniform thickness, remove any cup, provide a nice bright surface, and make sure there aren't any surprises. I put the Grizz in high gear and run the boards through pretty fast. It makes the boards much easier to sell, even at a significantly higher price.
Then, if a customer pays for it, I'll plane the lumber to whatever finished thickness they want. Small quantities while they wait, larger quantities they have to give me a day or two.
I figure since I charge $0.35 per bdft to saw logs, then charging $0.50 per bdft to plane lumber is easy money. It also gives me a slightly larger customer base because many of my customers are woodworkers and not everybody has a planer, or wants to use one.
I did have to upgrade my dust collector to one that allows me to attach a 6 inch discharge hose directly to the blower and bypass the bags or they would fill up all the time. So I use the discharge hose to blow all the chips outside into a big pile. Lately I've been blowing the chips straight into a dump trailer.
As much as I use the planer, sometimes I wish I did have a bigger one, maybe one powered by a V8, but the Grizzly does surprisingly well for my use and has planed a whole lot of wood.
YH,
I do the same thing on some boards like some pecan and q-sawn white oak so that the customer can see the figure. Makes a huge difference.
My Grizzly came this afternoon,but it is still in the crate that it came in :(
I hurt my knee the other day and don't want to agitate it,it's better ,so mayby tomorrow I can at least get it out of the crate! ;D
Papa1stuff
Did you get it working? Are the chips flying?
YH
YH,
I found the current limiting pot that you mentioned, and dialed it to the medium setting which I believe is 16 amps. It was set on 15 amps, and the highest setting is 17 amps. Just dialing it up one amp really helped. Thanks for the heads up. 12" wide, dry, white oak is a bear on the 30 Feet Per Minute speed :).
Just a question about the 15" models. About 2 years ago i had to replace the right angle gears on the table raising crank. Any one else have to do it? My machine is about 8 years old now.
Glad to be of help on dialing up the power. It is amazing how just a little more current will make such a difference.
I have not had any problems with my gears, but I'll go check them. Did the teeth wear down?
Yh
Quote from: YellowHammer on November 18, 2012, 08:17:19 PM
I routinely skip plane any FAS grade boards to increase their marketability and price. I take a light cut with the planer to get the lumber to a uniform thickness, remove any cup, provide a nice bright surface, and make sure there aren't any surprises. I put the Grizz in high gear and run the boards through pretty fast. It makes the boards much easier to sell, even at a significantly higher price.
A mistake I made on some quartersawn white oak was to skip plane one face only. Even though the lumber was air dried, one face acted different than the other and the boards ended up bowed. I should have skip planed both sides :).
Yellowhammer. The gears were a real low quality wore into sharp edges by the time I got into it. But if this set last as long then I want need the extra pair I ordered. That being said there is a delay in rotation already so I'm sure this set is going out though.
A little update , sorry for not answering ,but have been under the weather for a few days with some bad resturant food,that out of the way just in time for a little surprise cookout and party to celebrate our 60th anniversary a little early.
Anyway have not hooked up the planer yet but will in the very near future! ;D
I have noticed that several of you run the Grizzly planers and most have been pleased with them. Jmoore and I are going to look at a used GO454Z - 20" planer tomorrow morning. It has a 5hp single phase motor and a spiral head. Are there any specific things we should look out for before handing the guy green money?
It looks pretty good in the pictures on the ad. The infeed and out feed tables have a little surface rust but that is to be expected here. I have an old Rockwell 13" planer that does a good job and has planed a lot of wood but lately we really could have benefitted from being able to plane wide slabs.
The slippery slope continues...
Is anyone using a Grizzly 24" planer that is close by. I would like to see one in use. Am considering getting one . Thanks
Kyle,
I believe that the 454Z is a good shop planer. I have the 453Z which is the 3 hp and 15" version of that planer. It does a good job, but you cannot ram board after board thru it in a production mode. The 454Z with the 5 hp should handle more production runs better than the 453Z with only 3 hp.
I am running the GO544 with spiral head for my lumber business, and it is a good production machine for a one man operation. It is also 20", but it has a separate 5 hp motor for the cutterhead and a 2 hp motor for the infeed. The 454Z only has a single 5 hp motor I believe, but it is also considerably less expensive. When I am planing, I generally plane in 300 to 500 bf batches, which is essentially a pallet load of my kiln dried lumber, so I give the planer a good workout.
The carbide inserts last a long time if your wood is not dirty or gritty. I have put over 60,000 bf through the 544 and I am still on my fourth face of the cutters, but it is getting time to replace them.
Thanks for the explanation. John and I had the day off so we took the morning and drove to Hudson, Fl. and came home with a planer. The guy who we bought it from was evidently a book editor and bought a bunch of woodworking tools with a royalty check. Now his wife wants the garage for parking cars so he is selling a lot of his tools. He said he probably only planed 20 boards with the machine.
We brought it home, cleaned the bed, set the rollers and the infeed/outfeed tables the way we wanted them and wired it up. We fed it Australian Pine (Ian calls it Sheoak) and gnarly grained live oak and it produced smooth boards quietly. The liveoak we planed was the pith board out of a planter (Mr. Poston Widehead style) that I made last spring. That dull looking board came to life after planing - which will probably lead to a lot of slabs getting skip planed to emphasize their unique grain and appearance.
I had the same planer with straight knives in my old school's shop and it did a good job but this one is so much quieter and seems to do better on the crazy grained wood. John liked it so much that he said I ought to get a spiral head for my 8" jointer. I doubt that will happen any time soon.
We did not get a steal of a deal but we were both pleased with the cost and performance.