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Even with the vacuum attached, there is some leakage of fine sawdust from various places which is slightly annoying. I'm happy with the performance, the light, the rip fence and the cabinet where I can store accessories.
Set up was straight forward, but took a few hours and you definitely need someone to help you lift it up on the stand because it is heavy and metric wrenches. The motor fan guard was dented and rubbed against the fan, but it was easy to pull back into place.
This is my first bandsaw. It's a very solid piece of equipment and I've used it a lot over the past 4 weeks.
I don't know whether it arrived that way or if we caused the dent taking it out of the box. If you plan to move it around buy the optional wheels.
I used a plastic 4" to 2.25" reducer on the dust vent so I could attach a shop vac and I needed to use glue to make it stay in place. I plan on getting the extension so I can resaw something wider that six inch logs.
It came in two boxes that were easy to move around with a hand truck.Assembly took me much longer than I had expected, because of the riser block. Once the wheels were coplanar, my only problem was noise. Otherwise, I would have had to lift this saw off of the truck. I am also forced to consider the budget, so the Grizzly saw seemed to offer the most bang for my buck.My set up is the GO555X with a 6" riser block and an HTC mobile base.
The saw got through them both admirably. It keeps the lower cabinet somewhat clear, which is important, because the pulleys, belt and lower wheel are housed in it. Unfortunately, my shop only has a single 20 amp circuit at 110V, which means I am extremely limited in my choices for tools and can only run one at a time. I put the whole thing together myself, but in retrospect, that was stupid. The lower bearing guides had some rust in them and had seized.
One was Cedar that had been drying out in a field for years and the other was a fairly fresh piece of Bradford Pear that was saturated with water. If you have a couple of friends that can leave work with you, that is not a big deal. Get someone to help you, so you don't hurt yourself or damage your equipment. Still, a lot of dust never gets into that cabinet and is thrown around the shop.I have been skeptical of Grizzly for a long time.
I have needed a bandsaw for one purpose, resawing. I was able to replace them with bearings from an old pair of inline skates (they are the same size). Now it runs smooth and quiet.I have resawn two roughly 4 foot long, 11 inch diameter logs now. I was very impressed.Resawing creates more saw dust than I had ever imagined and the dust collection didn't seem to do very much, but it does. I had to shim the top wheel out after installing the block, which means I also had to shim the arbor shoulder. I am much less apprehensive now. Considering the low power and large capacity, I decided to make an investment in a 105" Lenox Tri-Master carbide tipped blade.Having ordered the saw from Amazon, I had to call Grizzly customer support to tell them to add the $30 lift gate service.
The adjustments/fixes that I had to make on this saw are common to all bandsaw makes on the market. I was lucky. I got some arbor shims and shoulder shims at the McMaster web site and I am sure you can find them elsewhere. If the sawdust is allowed to build up, your saw may not turn on, or the belt may start slipping. I am impressed with the features, the build quality, the finish and the performance.
Even in dense woods like purpleheart, the motor does not bog down; the 1.5HP motor and heavy cast-iron wheels give this machine some serious power. Don't let that discourage you from buying the machine; it is entirely a blade problem.The good news is that once I replaced the blade with a Wood Slicer, and spent a few hours tuning and adjusting the saw, it cuts like a dream.
I figured the extra motor power, the cast-iron wheels and the addition of a resaw fence was worth the cost above the regular G0555 model.There were a few minor problems. The riser block was a little more complicated to install due to the additional wiring to the lamp on this model, and it took a little extra time, but it fits fine.
I bought one of these with the riser block. It cuts like a cheese grater, wanders all over the place, and is too fine pitched to resaw.
The scale on the tension gauge is not accurate with the riser, so I use the musical note method of tensioning, which works fine. There is probably a way of adjusting the pointer on the tension scale, but I have not felt the need yet.My last gripe is that the stock 105" blade that comes with the riser block is worse than useless.
I have cut 1/16" veneers 8" wide. With the riser block, this machine has a respectable 12" resaw capacity, and the resaw fence is quite serviceable.
At this time, I think Germany/Japan need to come with something which will replace bandsaws for good. I never had a machine in my life which needed so many hours of aligning to get a simple straight cut. My first band saw purchase but after started using it, I realize, I need a Degee in engineering to get this to work. I am selling mine in Garage sale this year as it has proved to me useless in all aspects of woodworking, resawing, curve cutting, unless you have too much patience or degree in Engineering to get this too work. In general, I think band saw's is the worst power tool ever devised by human being. It needs aligning 4-5 different things to get a cut you wanted, you may want to use other tools. For me, it is waste of time to use this.
As far as I am concerned, this is the best value on the market. And free shipping from Amazon is a plus. Saw was easy to assemble and works like a charm.
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