Solid Jointer

After several weeks of debate, I decided to go with General International for my jointer. I seriously considered going with Grizzly for a jointer, most of the reviews I’ve read about them are very positive, and it sounds like their customer service is second to none. The deciding factor though was having a General dealer in town, so if anything goes wrong or if I have questions it would be easy to get help. The jointer was a display model, so it was already assembled and cleaned. The first thing that impressed me about it was how frickin heavy it was, despite the open base! There were several very tense moments as my wife and I tried to get this off of my truck…Despite it being already assembled, I went over it again to make sure that whoever did the assembly had done a good job. Next came setting the outfeed table height which was relatively simple to do with the hand wheel. I have yet to buy a dial indicator to check the knife height “accurately”.
After face jointing about 50LF so far here are my impressions:
Good:
smooth, quiet operation
easy adjustment
very smooth cuts

Bad:
poorly designed chip chute
positive stops for fence easily knocked out of calibration
should come with mobile base for price!

Overall, I’m happy with the jointer, although wishing I had the space and money to have bought an 8 inch version.

-- Rob, Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario