46 Grizzly grinder/sander experience
Description
This article is from the Woodworking FAQ Collection 5, by multiple authors.
46 Grizzly grinder/sander experience
From: colwell@mfci.UUCP (Robert Colwell)
Date: 9 Dec 89 03:21:48 GMT
I'd been eyeing that $99.50 Grizzly belt sander/grinder for a few
months, and broke down and ordered it last Monday. It arrived Thursday.
(Pretty quick, eh?) Herewith recounts the strange saga that ensued.
The first thing I discovered about it is that it isn't so much a
sander/grinder as it is a sander/grinder kit. It comes in more pieces
than old Heathkits used to. And there was no instruction/assembly
manual. The only thing I had to help me sort out all the various
nuts & bolts was the exploded diagram at the back of the user's manual.
So after a few hours of two-steps-forward, 1.5-steps-back, I had it
assembled except for two things. First, the motor had 4 wires sticking
out of it, and the power cord from the switch had 3. Hmm, not at all
obvious how to do this. Second, the circular grinder plate had a slot,
two keys, and an allen screw to hold it onto the motor shaft, but the
motor shaft had only a flat section where its corresponding slot ought
to be.
I called Grizzly this morning to straighten this out.
The first thing I learned was that there IS NO assembly manual. The
second thing was that they sent the wrong grinder plate, and that I
should grind the keys down so that they didn't need a motor shaft
slot for the plate to fit onto the shaft. (Hey, if I had a grinder
I wouldn't need this machine, would I?) The helpful Grizzly guy also
gave me motor wiring advice, but as I was ready to implement his
wiring, I noticed that the motor wiring cover had a little diagram
inside it, and the diagram didn't agree with the Grizzly guy. So
after a few minutes of meditation, I decided the cover was more likely
right than the guy, and tried it that way. It worked. Now the only
problem is that this machine is really loud. I suspect that the
grinder plate is not very well balanced, and all the sheet metal in this
thing is singing along with it at the tops of their metaphorical lungs.
I also got their $99.50 scroll saw, and I think it's a very nice machine.
(It wasn't in kit form, either.)
All in all, I'd say that $99.50 is still an amazing price for a sander
grinder (they paid shipping, too), but you'd never mistake the quality
nor the engineering of this beast with something from Delta. Come to
think of it, one should probably wash one's hands between using the
Grizzly and then going over to the Delta, to avoid blasphemy. :-)
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