Grizzly G0725 6 by 28-Inch Benchtop Jointer Review

Purchasing the pampered, almost-fully prepped lumber from retailers can be costly in the long run. If you’re serious about your craft, then you’ll need to find ways to cut costs wherever possible. One such is by milling your lumber from stray or old pieces. A jointer is an essential tool in the self-milling process since it’s the only reliable piece of machinery that can flatten surfaces and square edges.

The Grizzly G0725 is a benchtop jointer – a jointer that sits atop a table or bench for maximum space efficiency – that has gotten some rather mixed reviews from its customers. As you probably know, we like to review these products and many more to see whether their love/hate is rightfully deserved.

At first glance, the G0725 looks like any other benchtop jointer with a 6-inch capacity. Continue reading to find out whether this tool is worth the investment.

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Construction

The first thing we noticed and love about the G0725 is the most vital pieces of this tool are made of cast iron. This material guarantees immunity to warps and bends, ensuring that every board you pass over the cutter head will remain flush against the fence and table.

Compact Design

The compact design makes the G0725 a viable alternative to taking this unit to the job site. It hardly takes up any space and weighs just about 80 pounds so transporting it is a breeze. Now, just because it’s portable doesn’t mean it’s a great portable unit. We’ll need to see what other areas this unit excels in.

Motor and Speed

This Grizzly-made benchtop jointer comes with a 1-1/2-HP motor that generates up to 10,000 RPM cutter head speed. This is not the quickest motor available in a benchtop jointer, but it’s quick and powerful enough to remove deep layers of material per pass.

Cutterhead

The G0725 comes with a two-knife cutter head that delivers up to 20,000 cuts per minute. The more cuts packed into a 60-second time window, the smoother the surface of the board will be. The cutterhead’s knives can reach a maximum depth of 1/8 of an inch.

The straight knives of the G0725 work pretty well in producing flattened faces and squared edges, but we found that it takes quite a few more passes than we’d typically like. In general, helical-style cutterheads are much more efficient but also quite a bit more expensive. It’s more of a time thing than anything else.

Something else that you should be aware of is that the knives may not be completely straight when you first buy them. Adjusting them is easy – simply loosen the screws and realign the knives so they’re as straight as can be. This is easier said than done since the screws are difficult to turn, and stripping them is a major risk.

Table and Fence

Both of these pieces are made of heavy-duty cast iron. The table measures 28-1/2 x 6-1/4 inches for supporting rather sizable boards for a benchtop unit. The fence is 22-7/8 x 4-1/4 inches and can be tilted up to 135°. There are three positive fence stops to help ensure that you’re jointing your board at the correct angle (45°, 90°, and 135°).

One horrendous thing about the table is that it’s not completely flat. Even after tampering with the adjustable infeed table’s knob, we’re still not sure how we can get the infeed and outfeed tables to sit perfectly parallel to each other.

Dust Port

This unit has a 2-1/2-inch dust collection port on the backside. As your board passes over the cutter head, the resulting dust and chips will get suctioned through the port where you can attach either a collection bag (not included) or a shop vac hose.

Many customers and we found that the dust collection system in the G0752 is good but not great. At times, the port feels a little small and incapable of suctioning enough dust that goes flinging off the cutter head. A lot of the dust will get scattered on the table and around the unit, making cleanup a bit troublesome.

Verdict

We have high hopes for the G0725 as a budget-friendly benchtop jointer model. We were rooting for it to be an excellent addition to hobbyist and professional workshops, but from our experience, this tool is simply ridden with negatives – from an imbalanced table to seized screws to poor dust management.

Really, the only thing the Grizzly G0725 6 by 28-Inch Benchtop Jointer has going for it is a quick cutter head speed (20,000 cuts per minute), portability, and super-sturdy design. For home use, this would probably be a nice tool to have for quick jointing, but if you’re trying to save money by milling your lumber, you should begin looking elsewhere.

Last update on 2023-05-29 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API

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