Steel City vs. Shop Fox

[mshel]

Browsing the web, I came across this info. Might be interesting to know that the new Steel City Toolworks line of jointers came off the same line as the Shop Fox. Check out this link and browse the manual. Nothing remarkable other than theirs is only a 2 hp 3 knife unit but the basic components look just like my Shop Fox.

http://www.steelcitytoolworks.com/products/40605/40605_manual.pdf

Mike

 

[Monty]

Yep, the parallelogram bed looks the same. Motor is 2hp but based on the pics in the manual it looks just like ours! :eusa_thin 3 knives are actually not a disadvantage IMHO - fewer knives to fuss with when you do a blade change. I like the griz/SF switch better, too. I wonder what the price on those steel city tools will be?

 

[woodguy1975]

From the Steel City tools that DL and I checked out at the show they looked really good. It looks like they've done their homework and did things right. I wouldn't doubt that the Steel City is very similar to the Shop Fox. I would be willing to bet they did fix the motor mount situation on the Shop Fox version. I was really impressed with what I saw on the Steel City equipment at the show.

More knives is better because you get more cuts per inch. You can still get the exact same quality of cut on a 3 knive jointer as compared to a 4 knive jointer if you feed the stock 25% slower given the same RPM for the cutter head. You can take the shaft RPM up on a 3 knive cutter head to match a 4 knive by pulleys of course as well. When you compare 3 to 4 knives you've gotta look at the cutterhead RPM to judge if you will get a finer cut.

Thanks,

John

 

[mshel]

John,

How did their bandsaw line look in comparison to the Rikon or Griz, assuming that you have seen a Griz. I was impressed with the Rikon but seems they made a bad move redesigning the innerds ( or so it seems to some folks). Seems like the (SC) 18" might be a little under powered at 2hp. Thoughts?

Mike

 

[woodguy1975]

The Steel City bandsaws were among the most impressive tools they have. The only thing I saw that I didn't like was the fence. It was just a folded peice of fairly thick gage sheet metal. Not a machined surface, but did include the resaw pivot point with it. The tensioning system was top notch on the it.