All,
Here are the pics of my 1741 Shopfox Jointer. No pics, it didn't happen... correct?
I was the last to pick up my jointer. Got it on Saturday from the Raleigh store.
Mine was not a special edition 741... I got the 1741. But the numbers were WAY out of alignment from each other. Looked like they were installed by a 4 year old. So my wife and I removed them all!
I'll not go into to much detail, I think Monty has most of it covered. So I'll cover the differences and minor problems/nits with mine. So don't get me wrong.... I'm happy with the purchase, and it's a great machine for the money. But I wanted to show what I've found so far.
Overall, I like the machine. I really like the longer infeed table and the smoothness of the parallelogram beds. Like Monty, mine also passed the nickel test. :icon_thum The beds are nice and shiny (for now) and appear to be quite straight.
Also like Monty, I didn't like the manual's suggestion for tightening the v-belt. Just letting the motor hang with the 4 motor mounts loose, then pushing down with your hand while tightening the bolts causes the motor to become out of alignment by definition. If the only thing holding up the motor is the belt on the pulley, the mounts at the back of the motor (away from the pulley) will drop lower than the mounts at the front near the pulley. This caused my jointer to make some unhappy noises at startup and shutdown. I plan to run link belts and not allow the back to hang down when I install them and re-tighten the motor to the mounts. That should clear up the problem.
Without further ado... here are the pics of the jointer:
\
As to the problems specific to my jointer:
- There's a chip out on the outfield jointer table at the rear. It's not too big, and there's no sharp edge to it to scratch the wood. It's small enough that just placing the fence where it should be for normal operation, the chip is covered. So I'm not too worried about it.
Here is a photo of it from the top with the fence pulled way back:
And here is a pic of it from the rear of the jointer, with the fence pulled up high to get a better shot:
- When I moved the infeed bed down for the first time, the paint cracked and chipped away right above the "depth of cut" gauge. I guess that the wet paint on the side of the bed stuck to the base. The chips fell between the two before I could get them, and they appear to have rubbed off more on the side of the jointer bed where I'm guessing the paint had cracked already. I'll call ShopFox and ask for some touch up paint to try to clean up the area.
- My jointer had a fair amount of overspray on the jointer beds. Just need to clean it up with some elbow grease I guess. You can see a lot of it in the photo below... most of the silver-looking shine on the outfeed table is actually white paint. Hard for my camera to see, but it's more obvious in person:
Overall, I'd do the group buy again in a heatbeat. It's a nice jointer. Just a few cosmetic issues. I look forward to running a lot of board feet across the landing deck. :-D
Thanks for looking,
/Turtlewood
Here are the pics of my 1741 Shopfox Jointer. No pics, it didn't happen... correct?
I was the last to pick up my jointer. Got it on Saturday from the Raleigh store.
Mine was not a special edition 741... I got the 1741. But the numbers were WAY out of alignment from each other. Looked like they were installed by a 4 year old. So my wife and I removed them all!
I'll not go into to much detail, I think Monty has most of it covered. So I'll cover the differences and minor problems/nits with mine. So don't get me wrong.... I'm happy with the purchase, and it's a great machine for the money. But I wanted to show what I've found so far.
Overall, I like the machine. I really like the longer infeed table and the smoothness of the parallelogram beds. Like Monty, mine also passed the nickel test. :icon_thum The beds are nice and shiny (for now) and appear to be quite straight.
Also like Monty, I didn't like the manual's suggestion for tightening the v-belt. Just letting the motor hang with the 4 motor mounts loose, then pushing down with your hand while tightening the bolts causes the motor to become out of alignment by definition. If the only thing holding up the motor is the belt on the pulley, the mounts at the back of the motor (away from the pulley) will drop lower than the mounts at the front near the pulley. This caused my jointer to make some unhappy noises at startup and shutdown. I plan to run link belts and not allow the back to hang down when I install them and re-tighten the motor to the mounts. That should clear up the problem.
Without further ado... here are the pics of the jointer:
\
As to the problems specific to my jointer:
- There's a chip out on the outfield jointer table at the rear. It's not too big, and there's no sharp edge to it to scratch the wood. It's small enough that just placing the fence where it should be for normal operation, the chip is covered. So I'm not too worried about it.
Here is a photo of it from the top with the fence pulled way back:
And here is a pic of it from the rear of the jointer, with the fence pulled up high to get a better shot:
- When I moved the infeed bed down for the first time, the paint cracked and chipped away right above the "depth of cut" gauge. I guess that the wet paint on the side of the bed stuck to the base. The chips fell between the two before I could get them, and they appear to have rubbed off more on the side of the jointer bed where I'm guessing the paint had cracked already. I'll call ShopFox and ask for some touch up paint to try to clean up the area.
- My jointer had a fair amount of overspray on the jointer beds. Just need to clean it up with some elbow grease I guess. You can see a lot of it in the photo below... most of the silver-looking shine on the outfeed table is actually white paint. Hard for my camera to see, but it's more obvious in person:
Overall, I'd do the group buy again in a heatbeat. It's a nice jointer. Just a few cosmetic issues. I look forward to running a lot of board feet across the landing deck. :-D
Thanks for looking,
/Turtlewood
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