Grizzly G0490XW 8″JOINTER W/SPIRAL CUTTERHEAD
After 3 months waiting, it has finally arrived. My new 8” Jointer from Grizzly (G0490X). This jointer does require some assembly and a bit of heavy lifting but it is not a complicated process. Now, I don’t go out of town very often, so naturally when I was on the other side of the country the freight company called me to tell me when the delivery was scheduled to arrive. I like to believe every storm has a silver lining, and during my trip I really had to stretch to find the upside in this scenario. My storm, included a wife who is 8 months pregnant, sick with the flu, and looking after our 21 month old daughter, who is of course extremely active. Did I also mention that she is helping her mother recover from back surgery. I agree this storm seems pretty grim especially from my wife perspective, however from my perspective there was a very slight silver lining…. since my wife was home sick she was able to instruct the delivery driver where to put both crates containing the jointer. All thanks be to God for blessing me with such a strong and tenacious wife. I think most women in that scenario would have gone off the deep end.
The Jointer arrived in 2 crates for a combined weight of approximately 560 lbs. Needless to say my petite wife suffering from the flu, although very strong, would not be moving the shipment anywhere after the delivery driver dropped it off. For that reason it was critical that the driver either place it directly into the garage. If the package was not able to be rolled into the garage my wife would have to at minimum lay a tarp over the shipment till I could return home and move it from the driveway.
Unboxing both crates was fairly easy. Once the strapping was removed, the wood crate practically fell apart. I took my time and opened as much as I could and lined up all the parts to ensure everything was included. Upon removing the base from the box I instantly noticed that the on/off switch arm and motor were bolted inside the base for shipping and would need to be moved.
Advise: Leave the on/off switch mounted inside the base until you need to move it. I unbolted the on/off switch arm prematurely and it simply got in the way. It became enough of a nuisance that I bolted it back inside the base so it was out of the way as I lifted the jointer bed into place.
The jointer bed was the one item that required a little muscle and some not-so-safe practices. Even before I could attempt to move the jointer bed into place it had to be unbolted from the crate. Luckily it was resting on a pallet which allowed me to get one hand under the crate and unbolt it.
When it came time to finally lift the jointer bed into place I admittedly practiced the “Safety 3rd” methodology. See Pic below and use your imagination. I lucked out and did not encounter any catastrophic failures during my fool proof plan.
At the end of this article I have included a very comprehensive YouTube video from Matt Heere. (See video below). The process he used to lift the jointer bed into place was much safer. If possible follow his example.
Advise: The motor is also heavier than expected and is bolted to the underside of the jointer base unit. The carriage bolts used to mount the motor in place for shipping are located directly beneath where the jointer bed will mount to the base. Make sure to unbolt the motor and attach it to its final resting place before you lift the jointer bed into place. If I had to do this over I would even mount the motor into place while I had the base on its side, then lift the entire assembly into place.
Overall the jointer is not difficult to assemble. There are some slight differences in the instructions provided by Grizzly and the configuration of the jointer but they are still plenty adequate to guide you in assembly.
With this large addition to my shop I am starting to have the same problem that a majority of woodworkers have. My shop is starting to get a little cramped. Eventually I plan to get rid of one of my table saws, as well as disable the garage door and build a temporary wall in front of it, giving me some extra usable wall space. Not sure exactly what I plan to do with the extra wall space. But stay tuned for a future article about the process of disabling the garage door and building the temporary wall.
Behind the scenes tangent: I did start to shoot a video of the assembly process where I planned to go into a good amount of detail in hopes others could use it as an assembly guide for their future purchase. When I watched the playback of the video the quality was horrible. I am sure this is mostly because the only cameras I own are either attached to my phone or computer, not to mention the poor shop lighting. Eventually, I do plan to remedy the sub par camera and shop lighting, however there are other higher priority items that I need to address first. i.e. dehumidifier and/or mini-split to control the humidity levels and temperature in the shop.
Let me know in the comments section below, if you have any questions or input.