Grizzly Industrial G0514X - 19" 3 HP Extreme Series Bandsaw

I'd been looking at some of the bigger bandsaws on the market for the average amateur woodworker. I had the Jet 14" closed stand model with a riser block and 1hp motor. I'd seen the Jet 18" in person and a Pioneer of comparable size. I've never purchased piece of equipment from Grizzly, though I've purchased other things from them in the past. I wanted to be able to resaw without pushing my 14" saw beyond its limitations. The 19" Extreme series saw seemed to fit the bill at an unbeatable price point. I purchased the saw using Windows Live cashback and an Ebay coupon and therefore ended up getting the $1095 dollar saw for about $785 plus shipping. Grizzly was fantastic communicating with me regarding the shipping and I picked it up at the Fed Ex freight depot. It is a big heavy saw that was crated very well and had no damage whatsoever. When I got it home, I uncrated it and built the HTC mobile base around it. Getting it set up was straightforward and the manual is very good at providing troubleshooting and tune-up tips. Although for the most part everything was right on out of the box. I will have to shim or adjust the fence as it tilts relative to the table. The table was very flat, certainly adequate enough. This isnt a jointer. The tracking was right on. The cast iron wheels provide tremendous amount of momentum and were balanced as they were said to be. This model does not have the foot brake, and I would estimate it took the saw about 30 seconds to come to a full and complete stop after turned off. I will be buying some resawing blades and taking some thin slices off soon. About the only complaint I would voice with the saw is setting up the thrust bearings. The guards for the guide arm are in the way if one is trying to use feeler gauge to set them accurately. There may be a way to get to it, but I'll have to continue to search for it. Overall...I couldn't be happier with my purchase.

The saw is well made but the table is not square to blade. We will find some small shims to correct.

I am a repeat customer of Grizzly products having purchased, in addition to this bandsaw, a planer, jointer and cyclone dust collector. The saw came in an open crate that was falling apart by the time it reached by driveway. However, there was no damage. Once again the manual was easy to read, however somewhat confusing in that this was a generic manual for three of their bandsaws of this style. One thing that I thought was a little odd was that it did not come with a power cord. I am used to the machines comming without a plug as there are many styles of 220 V single phase plugs out there, however to not even have a cord I thought was a little cheap. That being said, however, a quick trip to Home Depot and 15 minutes later the cord and plug were attached. Having never owned a bandsaw in the past I took my time making all of the adjustments that were recommended. From the factory it was almost ready to go. This machine comes with two dust ports. I only use the one just below the table and had not felt the need to hook up the second, lower level, collector. I am extremely pleased and am looking to purchase yet another Grizzly product. Of note, however, is that with all of the machines I have purchased I buy the mobile bases that are recommended. The D2057 that was recommended was just shy of the size needed. I needed a mobile base for my table saw so this is not really a big deal however, after setting up the base, in the process of destroying the box, I'm not sure what I would have done if I would have needed to send the base back to get a replacement.

I bought this band saw (Grizzly 19" Extreme) for my architectural model shop where it saw only occasional use -- maybe a couple of hours each month. Ususally it would cut thin plywood or sheets of plastic. I would occasionally use it to cut 3-4" thick Bass wood on it before feeding the wood in to my planer -- but nothing that put much stress on the machine. After six months and probably less than 10 hours of total use the motor died (one of the capacitors was burned out). I replaced the capacitor but that did not fix the problem and Grizzly sent me a new motor after I sent them the broken one. So far so good. But then after another year (and again maybe 10 to 15 hours of use) the motor again died (capacitors OK this time) and Grizzly announced that they wanted $450 for a new one. I can not stress how minimally this tool was used, and the fact that it was never abused, strongly enough. I had expected to never have to give this machine another thought except for occasionally changing the blade... How wrong I was. The motor is cheap Chinese crap. Grizzly's customer service is to my mind also crap.

<JAN 2014, still enjoying the machine, still have no other Band-saws to compare it too> (end Edit) I ordered this machine. I am happy with it. Problems: I had a heck of a time getting it to track properly, and changing blades can be a trial. I am not sure how exclusive that is to this model, as I have never really done much with bandsaw of this size till I got this one. I have watched tutorial videos by people with various other brands and it appears to be within the "norm". I just need more experience. I have the model with the electric brake. Love it. I could imagine how long it would take to wind down otherwise. My biggest complaint was the resaw fence. It did not have any instructions with it and it took me at least 15 minutes to puzzle out what I was supposed to do with all the pieces. I still have one piece that I am unsure about, but all runs well. I have resawn, and sawn through wet and dry white oak up to around 12" in thickness on the machine. No noticeable issues with power. I also resawed some delicate Sweetgum boards with large success. I received the machine in non-working order. When mounting the power switch box they put a screw through a Live Wire and the machine was grounded. I snapped a photo, and emailed it to grizzly. They called me in about 1 hour. They told me they would send a part, but it was not in stock and would have to be back ordered. Not to worry though, they said it would receive priority status. I groaned as I had some logs waiting to be sawn and could only imagine how long that would take. They mailed out the replacement part the next day via Fed Ex 1 day service. Two days later I had the part. That has to be the best customer service experience I have ever had. While I doubt if I have another issue with a Grizzly product that I could get such awesome service a second time, I have no doubt that Grizzly while make it right. In closing, I dont know if there are better machines out there. But I do know this one hasn't let me down yet. It is one of the least used machines in my shop, but when I need it, there is no substitute.