I ordered the brute in April and arrived just yesterday. 5 hp, 20 inch
spiral with the inset cutters. Packaged nice and tight like most of
Grizzlys schtuff. The setup was almost non existent. infeed/outfeed
rollers and wire on a 220 plug. The table had some rust spots on it that
didn't thrill me, but not a deal killer. My gawd it is a heavy s.o.b., they
supply built in lift rods so movement won't to much trouble (set up for a
forklift)

When they tell you its quiet, its an understatement. Barely more noise than
a jointer. The finish it put out was good, but...not as good as a fixed 4
knife planer.

I ran some Doug-fir through it to start and there were clear individual
knife marks. Tore into it and checked each cutter head (which I should have
done to start with). there were definitely some that weren't seated as well
as others ( I think there's 80 total or so...).

Ran some ash through, better but still visible cutter marks. I called
Grizzly and they told me to pull each cutter, clean, oil and reset...

Then I ran a 16" x 10' black walnut through and the finish was definitely
worse than a fixed knife machine. There were visible marks from many of the
cutters and it just wasn't a crisp clean finish one might expect, (granted
it is an unforgiving species for marks)

I next ran a mixed bag of maple, figured maple and white oak through and
took the final pass with 1/64" or so and the finish was good. No cutter
marks, worked WAY better on figured grain than a fixed knife machine but
still not a "Great" finish. Not as clean as a 4 knife machine with new
knives. I would compare it to our old Bellsaw after it had ran 500 feet or
so.

No snipe out of the box and the feed system is great. Grabs the board,
great anti-kickback system. Came with 10 extra cutter insets and 10 fixed
screw tip extractors. Two speeds, of which I need to experiment with more
(all the test boards were on the faster of the two).

Its about an extra $1000 for the spiral head. I like it overall so far, but
need to run a few hundred/k board feet through it to say its worth the extra
money! Definitely a heavy duty planer for the money.

First review ever...just thought I'd post my two cents worth.

Schroeder

Sorry guy, my opinion Grizzly sells junk. Bought their 3hp shaper.
Just plain junk. Used it a couple times and then gave it away. Life is
too short to spend it trying to adjust the fence on this. You get what
you pay for. 750 bucks wasted. New motto is: Buy the best you can afford
so you won't be disappointed.
Rabbit

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Lon Marshall

I've got a Grizzly G0444Z Table saw, G1029Z 2 hp dust collector, and a
G0555z bandsaw that I love and would not trade it for any other out there on
the market. That's Lon's opinion maybe he got a bad piece of gear. I even
got some crap from Delta once that I took back. Ask anybody out there who
has their stuff. If you ever have a chance go to one of the Grizzly show
rooms they are something to see.



"Joe Mama" wrote in message
...

Sorry guy, my opinion Grizzly sells junk. Bought their 3hp shaper.
Just plain junk. Used it a couple times and then gave it away. Life is
too short to spend it trying to adjust the fence on this. You get what
you pay for. 750 bucks wasted. New motto is: Buy the best you can afford
so you won't be disappointed.
Rabbit

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Lon Marshall