I finally managed to clean my garage/workshop this weekend. It's still not totally functional, but it's much more usable. While I was cleaning, I found the box to a Groz #7 jointer plane I had bought a while back from Woodcraft for about $100. No other words can describe this tool other than "Complete Piece of Crap." Even after basic tuning, this made-in-India doorstop was completely unusable. I'm not sure why I didn't return it, but I figured they wouldn't take it back after modification. The problem stemmed from the chipbreaker, which was simply too long to adjust properly. At its highest position, the blade stuck out of the sole about 3/32" -- much too high to be useful. I salvaged it by grinding down the chipbreaker just enough to retract the blade into the sole. It's usable now, but I still don't recommend this product to anyone, especially at this price when alternatives like the Grizzly H7568 22" Smoothing Plane are available for half the price.
Also, I recently noticed that my dust collector wasn't drafting well, but I couldn't find any clogs in the (local) lines. I emptied and cleaned the bags but failed to check the turbine intake until I was rearranging the shop. Dummy me had run the collector hooked up directly to the planer without the cyclone separator--bad idea! It had completely clogged the turbine intake. Doh! Hopefully I didn't shorten the life of the collector.
I also managed to rearrange some shelving so I could use one for lumber storage. Now I just need to build some rolling carts for the few remaining tools without casters.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment