Anyone have any experience with these machines? The look like descent equipment but I have never worked with them before. Any input would be appreciated.
Same basic machine as Grizzly. Different color paint and maybe couple of cosmetic upgrades.
Biggest difference is you might be able to get Shop Fox from a machinery dealer around the corner...to get Grizzly you will have to mail order or visit one of there three stores.
I have the Shop Fox moulder...the W&H clone. It's a nice machine...but I don't believe the quality of a W&H.
It is basically like the Grizzly. The dealer network also will service them. They have a two year warranty verses a one year for grizzly. If you're buying from a dealer there's no shipping charge ( it's built into the price ) but you will have sales tax.
No problems here. Same basic story, basically like a Grizzly. We run two Shop Fox shapers and have had no problems.
We had the mortiser and found it to be of very poor quality and considered ourselves lucky to only lose $100 on the resale.
It seems the quality of the machines depend on the tool you get, with both grizzly and shop fox. I think the more industrial stuff is better quality compared to other machines, whereas the low-end machines are cheap chinese stuff usually.
I have a lot of Grizzly tools and I like them. The only Shop Fox tools I have are their mobile bases (3 of them). I don't like them at all. I really think SF = Grizzly w/ different color in terms of power tools. My griz table saw is a workhorse!
I have some SF bases and a SF drill press. Waste of $. I find the overall quality of SF stuff to be clubby at best and the parts they send to put the stuff together is just garbage. Grizzly table saw is a good workhorse, but the Grizzly shaper and band saw are marginal. All were bought as a start up set, so I knew that going into it. Get what you pay for, but I must say they have all paid for themselves.