My Evolving Woodshop #1: Grizzly G023RL Arrives!

My new tablesaw arrived today. I had been wanting to upgrade from a 20 year old G1022 contractor’s saw for quite a while. After doing a ton of research online, aided by many of you wonderful folks here in the Lumberjocks community, I finally pulled the trigger on the G1023RL late yesterday afternoon. Even though I am only about 2 hours away from Muncy, just across the river in NJ, I never thought I would get the machine today—I figured on having the rest of the week and this weekend at least to get my shop ready for the new arrival. Needless to say, after receiving the call from the freight driver saying he would be here in an hour, I was scrambling around like a maniac trying to get the shop ready. Some of you may be wondering why, since I live so close to Muncy, didn’t I just go out there and pick it up myself? Well, first of all, I don’t have a suitable vehicle. A good friend does have a pickup, which he has volunteered to let me use whenever I need it, but he is disabled, and I really didn’t relish trying to unload a beast like the 1023 from the back of a pickup by myself—the money spent on shipping with a lift gate was worth every penny to me.

When the truck arrived this afternoon, the driver was kind enough to use his pallet jack to get the crate to within a foot or so of my shop door. He said he would have been happy to put the machine inside the shop, but I couldn’t find the key for the big door and I don’t have a heavy enough bolt cutter to cut the lock—otherwise I would have been thrilled to take him up on the offer! As it was, I used a six foot shale bar, a come-along and some heavy chains to winch the machine pallet halfway through the shop’s doorway, where I had a mobile machine base positioned. Some careful levering, tilting and jockeying got the machine off its pallet and on to the mobile base. Once that was accomplished I wheeled the unit into the middle of the room, turned off the lights, locked the door and went back into the house to have a cold drink and cool off—wrassling that beast just about did me in! I still have to degrease, assemble and calibrate it, but I can do that in easy stages at my own pace.

Oh yeah, I also got a new Grizzly G0548ZP Dust Collector today—it came on the same truck with the saw, but after the epic struggle I had with getting the 1023 into the shop (and the great anticipation I have for it), the DC hardly rates a footnote—LOL!!

-- Sow justice, reap peace