I am in Charlotte and have a 16" invicta jointer with a spiral insert cutter head. Mine is running on a 20 H.P. Desco rotory converter and will take a bigger bite of any hardwood than I am man enough to feed it. The machine is a beast but the fence leaves much to be desired. From factory it will not stay at 90 deg. It was completely unusable. The dealer that I purchased form tried unsuccesfully to correct a bad design flaw before selling me the machine. When I contacted them they said that they were aware of a design problem but had a fix. They sent me a new fence with another jerry rigged solution and it has worked reasonably well for 1-1/2 years but the fence is fixed at 90 deg. which is ok for what I need a jointer to do. All said and done I love the jointer and for the price that you mentioned would buy several more if you don't need to bevel on it. Also, I kept my 8" jointer when I upgraded and in no time flat I discovered that it was not needed and sold it. The big tables and abundant smooth power will spoil you.
Man, Travis you better go get that thing before I start whining to my wife and get it myself!!
Alan,What brand of spiral insert head does your machine have, a Byrd Shelix? I looked into getting one for my 20" planer, but the price was outrageous, even getting it from Hobren who would give me a good deal. It was 3 times what I paid for my 15" Shelix, that is my former Shelix:crybaby2:.
Man, Travis you better go get that thing before I start whining to my wife and get it myself!!
Alan,
I don't know what brand the cutter head on my jointer is. It came stock on the Invicta. It is definitely not a Byrd. It is probably the cheapest Chinese thing that the Brazilians could find, but it works great.
Lorin
Now I remember, when I looked up their site did I notice Invicta was selling a spiral insert head. How do you like it? Have you ever used or seen a Byrd Shelix? How do they compare. I wonder what kind of head the one Travis is looking at has?
Forgot to post a pic. This is a pic from the invicta site, but it looks exactly the same. 16" wide, 102" long.
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It really is a nice machine. I didn't get any pictures of it though. Biggest concern with it is moving it. I mean, I have no clue how I would get a 1400 lb machine from here to there.