# Grizzly brand planes



## gj13us (Apr 19, 2016)

Another plane question. I was window shopping on Amazon and see Grizzly has planes. But it's sort of weird. They label the 22", 14", and 10" planes "smoothing" planes, except one with a corrugated sole, which is labeled "serrated." I'm a little surprised that a tool company with Grizzly's reputation would have a line of hand planes with inaccurate names. Anyone familiar with Grizzly planes?


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## JohnTC (Mar 1, 2018)

Have seen the same planes on Amazon and that's about it. Maybe their sales team aren't as knowledgeable.


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## epicfail48 (Mar 27, 2014)

Probably a mix-up between the design department and marketing. Design forwarded a print that had a listing for a plane with a smooth or serrated blade, marketing saw that and assumed it was the type of plane.

Id chalk it up to a mistake and move on. Grizzly is admittedly lacking when it comes to their tool names and descriptions, luckily that doesnt change how good their tools are for the price


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## woodnthings (Jan 24, 2009)

*Names VS length ......*

Sometimes they got the name correct, as for the jack plane, other times you have to go by the length as the 22" "smooth" plane is typically called a jointer. 



Obviously, the web site was not prepared by a woodworker. :|
https://www.grizzly.com/hand-planes


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## FrankC (Aug 24, 2012)

woodnthings said:


> Sometimes they got the name correct, as for the jack plane, other times you have to go by the length as the 22" "smooth" plane is typically called a jointer.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


There is a pretty good chance the site was not built in North America, much work in now farmed out to overseas countries where English is not the first language of the developer, so unless it goes past a good proof reader things can get strange.


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## gj13us (Apr 19, 2016)

To be honest, when I see glitches in the comms like that, it leads me to mistrust the product's quality.


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## Tool Agnostic (Aug 13, 2017)

FrankC said:


> There is a pretty good chance the site was not built in North America, much work in now farmed out to overseas countries where English is not the first language of the developer, so unless it goes past a good proof reader things can get strange.





gj13us said:


> To be honest, when I see glitches in the comms like that, it leads me to mistrust the product's quality.


I should not be surprised when I find instructions and other product documentation in "English" that never passed by someone who knows the language. I am very good at teasing out the "real" or "intended" meaning of poorly written English, but sometimes it is incomprehensible. Trust me, none of the authors has ever seen the word "incomprehensible." Sometimes I wonder whether a human has ever seen the English version of the text before it is printed and packaged. 

Like @gj13us, I see documentation quality as a reflection of product quality, which has suffered greatly in the drive to ever cheaper goods. If a manufacturer can save 1/10 of a penny on production costs by skimping on documentation proofing services, it is worth it on the large scale, where margins are razor thin.

I always wondered if an English language proofing service could thrive in areas with large manufacturing bases where English is not the native language. My conclusion was that if companies were willing to pay for it, it would exist. 

I see proofing errors all the time. (Can it be classified as an illness?) Yesterday, we ate lunch at a restaurant with a custom-made sign detailing the long history of the place. At the bottom of the text, they proclaimed that "President Geroge W. Bush" had eaten there. I said wryly to Spouse that "We usually park a car in our Geroge." 

Another documentation quality issue that I encounter is "micro-unreadable print" (my term) that comes with inexpensive products. A few days ago, we bought a spare key blank for a car. The complex programming instructions were printed on a paper the size of a fortune cookie fortune. I needed a jeweler's loupe to read it, no kidding. The young people in our family could not read the print without a magnifier. Quite frankly, it was a technological tour de force, pushing the physical limits of how small you can make readable ink text on paper. The font size had to be in fractions of a point. Anything smaller would have had to be engraved onto metal.

(My solution: Rather than read it one word at a time through the loupe, I found a "key phrase" and searched for that phrase on the internet. I found the same text instructions online, so I copied and pasted it into a regular document that I could read. It filled the page.)


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## Tony B (Jul 30, 2008)

JohnTC said:


> ............................ Maybe their sales team aren't as knowledgeable.


I believe this is the problem, compounded by the fact that a non-woodworking specialist is proof reading. They are looking for grammatical errrors and not technical errors.

I am a relatively recent returnee to this site. I have been mostly absent for the last 6 years or so up until recently. Anyway, back to the way things were 6 or 7 years ago..............It seemed like every time someone here bought a Grizzly table saw or other wise major tool, it had lots of problems out-of-the-box. Anything from broken parts to missing parts. Grizzly promptly took care of the problem and the buyers bragged about grizzly customer service - which is a good thing. It was just the idea that the packaging and shipping was that bad that soured me to any grizzly products in my future. 
It was sometime in the mid-1980's that I bought a 4 bag dust collector and a 48"(I think) edge sander from them. They looked cheaply made but did the trick. It was OK for what is was but accuracy was not required in their use. Recently I used a grizzly 10" Hybrid Table saw. Again - not impressed. BTW, I was told that several parts were either missing or broken when purchases new about a year ago. 

Seems like not much has changed.


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## FrankC (Aug 24, 2012)

There are two kinds of people that purchase products, those that open the package, study the instructions and then test the product, and those that open the package, remove the product and toss the package along with instructions in the garbage.

Many of us that are replacing a product that we are familiar with fit into the second group.

Some years ago I was helping my daughter, an engineer that reads and writes a lot of detailed reports, put up some curtain rods. Every time I picked up the drill it was stuck in a spot between forward and reverse, seems my daughter had read that when not using the drill to switch it to neutral so she was following instructions, I was not aware drills had a actual neutral.


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## gj13us (Apr 19, 2016)

FrankC said:


> I was not aware drills had a actual neutral.



I forget about being stuck in neutral nearly every time I use it. :wallbash:


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## DrRobert (Apr 27, 2015)

They are bottom tier planes. 



If you want to buy a new plane but not at premium prices, the WoodRiver line that Woodcraft sells are the best value out there IMO. I own several of them and will I can't tell that much difference from Lie Nielsens.


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## woodnthings (Jan 24, 2009)

*Not a "neutral' per se....*



FrankC said:


> There are two kinds of people that purchase products, those that open the package, study the instructions and then test the product, and those that open the package, remove the product and toss the package along with instructions in the garbage.
> 
> Many of us that are replacing a product that we are familiar with fit into the second group.
> 
> Some years ago I was helping my daughter, an engineer that reads and writes a lot of detailed reports, put up some curtain rods. Every time I picked up the drill it was stuck in a spot between forward and reverse, seems my daughter had read that when not using the drill to switch it to neutral so she was following instructions, I was not aware drills had a actual neutral.





gj13us said:


> I forget about being stuck in neutral nearly every time I use it. :wallbash:



The center position between forward and reverse is a "lock out" so when the trigger is pushed in while in the tool bag it won't drain down the battery.


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## Tool Agnostic (Aug 13, 2017)

woodnthings said:


> The center position between forward and reverse is a "lock out" so when the trigger is pushed in while in the tool bag it won't drain down the battery.


I use the central "neutral" position as a chuck lock for when I want to use the drill/driver as a "jumbo manual screwdriver" in a final step to achieve an exact hand-feel tightness or for orienting screw heads exactly how I want them. It is faster and easier than putting down the drill/driver and picking up a screwdriver.


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## DesertRatTom (Aug 14, 2012)

I find Wind River's series 4 planes are really good for the money. Yeah, I like Lie Nielson and Veritas, but generally can't justify the difference in price. It's all in how you tune them up anyway, although some of the tip top brands arrive perfectly tuned.


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## AwesomeOpossum74 (Jan 27, 2017)

Interesting that this came up, as I only recently watched a review video on this. Apparently Grizzly and many other similar planes sold on sites like Amazon are manufactured in the same factory in India (with minor differences/features). Look up "Amazing Indian Hand-Planes" by Rex Kreuger on Youtube.


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## Tony B (Jul 30, 2008)

Just because 2 products come from the same factory does not mean they are the same. Each ''manufacturer' sets their own specs. For instance, the 2 different product manufacturers may specify the use of the same mold for the metal cabinets however one manufacturer wants 22 gauge steel while the other specifies 20 gauge. Heck, they may even specify different qualities. The same goes for the paint jobs and all the interior workings including bearings. So, the same factory doesn't mean as much as one would think.


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## woodnthings (Jan 24, 2009)

*A review of the Grizzly hand plane vs .....*

This is a pretty honest review in my opinion:
https://www.amazon.com/Grizzly-H756...a2275ea828ce12426b79020d9bbfa1&language=en_US


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## AwesomeOpossum74 (Jan 27, 2017)

Tony B said:


> Just because 2 products come from the same factory does not mean they are the same. Each ''manufacturer' sets their own specs. For instance, the 2 different product manufacturers may specify the use of the same mold for the metal cabinets however one manufacturer wants 22 gauge steel while the other specifies 20 gauge. Heck, they may even specify different qualities. The same goes for the paint jobs and all the interior workings including bearings. So, the same factory doesn't mean as much as one would think.


Yes, I understand that. But the video (which happens to be the same as the one woodnthings posted) does shed some light onto the subject, manufacturer, quality, differences, etc.


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## bob493 (Nov 13, 2019)

Late to the party here, but Ill chime in since I own the 22" planer.

For starters, no Im not gonna justify my cheap purchase. I had a 15" wide board that I needed to face and I just dont have a way to do that with power tools. I'd like to say I spent 30$ on this tool (yes 30$), I wasnt expecting much, I just wanted this board flat. 

When I got it, it wasnt ... "flat". Like, someone took a garage sale yard stick to it and called it good "flat". I blued it up and it had maybe 30% contact, severe high spots on the outsides and no contact at the blade. For a jointer thats just totally not usable of course; but also not "unfixable". Lots of emery cloth working up to 3000 grit on my surface plate took it to perfectly flat. This is actually a lot more delicate than it seems because you have to keep the face completely 90 to the sides ideally. This process took a few hours if I recall correctly. That all said and done, it was pretty good and flat, and the body of the plane is really solid and had no obvious defects I could find. 

Next up? The handles. They use rosewood handles (or they did at the time, CITES might have a cow now), but it was finished in this god awful applied lacquer( epoxy?? It was really really thick). But being solid wood, they refinished really nice. The frog and capstan were incredibly solid and the action was really smooth all around. So for the guts it was turning out to be a pain, but really nice bones. 

The iron. The iron is TRASH. I think mine was over tempered, because while it sharpened real easy, the tip of the edge just curled out. It was totally unusable and I emailed grizzly and they just sent me a new one. The new one was ... not great either. More usable than the other, but Im not sure what kinda steel it is, but it wouldnt hold an edge. So I got fed up and I had invested so much time in it at this point, I decided to get a hock blade replacement. Just drops right in, no problem. Im FAIRLY Sure I got the O1 blade? Im not super positive, it was on sale for 20$ so I jumped on it. 

My verdict? If i spent 150$ on this, I'd be quite upset. I see them crop up on amazon around that price lately and its definitely a hard pass. HOWEVER... for 30$ (+ replacement blade), if you have the capability to flatten the sole, set it up properly, take the time and get it "just right", yeah its mad decent. 

Its on sale for 40$ at this website, I have no affiliation to it. If you're incapable or unwilling to do the work, its absolutely a hard hard pass for sure. I dont hand plane much honestly, so I really wasnt looking to spend 300$ on a nice #7 for something Ill use twice a year maybe. So for the like 75 bucks shipped for everything, and a few hours of elbow grease, I am quite pleased with the performance and feel of this plane. 

https://www.larrycloth.com/grizzly-22-inch-plane-smoothing-h7568


Admittedly, I dont have a huge repertoire of hand planes to work with, but I do own a vintage stanley #4 ish?, a WWII era corsair scrub plane, and a Sargent again somewhere around #4 as well. (I got all 3 for 15$ to refurbish, quite the bargain). I know the stanleys are quite well regarded, and the corsairs seem to be hidden gems, but I honestly say they are all very similar in quality at this point. The sargent has the best frog, and the corsair has these weird handles, but nothing strikes me as diminished quality in the grizzly? Ive had it for a couple years now, shes getting a little rusty, but still performs just fine. Maybe the adjustment isnt as nice, but I dont fiddle with it much after I set it anyway. As I said, I really dont handle plane too terribly much, just oversized boards. 

Ive had the misfortune of owning kobalt and harbor freight hand planes. This isn't even nearly as close to as bad lol. Out the box, its a paper weight, but its definitely serviceable and once tuned up is quite nice over all. And boy is it HEAVY.


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## AwesomeOpossum74 (Jan 27, 2017)

bob493 said:


> Late to the party here, but Ill chime in since I own the 22" planer.


Another advocate for "you don't have to break the wallet to get a good tool" if you're willing to spend a little fettle time. Personally, I think everyone should get experience fettling older or less refined tools. Brings an appreciation to using the tool that buying new/expensive ones can't.


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## bob493 (Nov 13, 2019)

AwesomeOpossum74 said:


> Another advocate for "you don't have to break the wallet to get a good tool" if you're willing to spend a little fettle time. Personally, I think everyone should get experience fettling older or less refined tools. Brings an appreciation to using the tool that buying new/expensive ones can't.


Haha, I secretly enjoy sanding; its monotonous but relaxing. Get a rhythm going and blast some tunes, I can get lost for hours lol


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## SEMIJim (Nov 26, 2019)

AwesomeOpossum74 said:


> Another advocate for "you don't have to break the wallet to get a good tool" if you're willing to spend a little fettle time. Personally, I think everyone should get experience fettling older or less refined tools. Brings an appreciation to using the tool that buying new/expensive ones can't.


 I agree. But my feeling is that if you're going to put in the time to tune a hand plane, get an old _Stanley Bailey_ and tune away.

I've got a big ol' piece of thick glass affixed to a slightly bigger piece of 3/4" cabinet grade ply I used to use to flatten my hand planes and true the sides.

I've got 3-5 old hand planes I never got around to. Someday maybe I'll get to them.




bob493 said:


> Haha, I secretly enjoy sanding; its monotonous but relaxing. Get a rhythm going and blast some tunes, I can get lost for hours lol


That's the way I feel about sharpening


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