Hi,
Currently have the opportunity to purchase a French made 20″ gem magic jointer. However I am unfamiliar with the brand was curious of its quality, the ease of sourcing parts and any issues this machine can present. Any information is greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Replies
There is a "Magic" jointer planer combo from Belgium, that is near France and a Gem Magic from Italy...also near France. One would need to find who distributes and services your machine. I'm assuming your in the US but then maybe your not..
There appears to be many more European manufacturers of tools and machines than we ever get to know about in the US. Some are marketed correctly here like Felder with distribution and support. Some show up here without maybe the money behind them and maybe because of that fail and disappear. If that happens one might find themselves with what could be a really good machine with no support. But then you could also find that a machine you purchase here from a company with a large presence here also has no support. I just foolishly purchased a Grizzly jointer/ planer combo that is maybe 10 years old or so. Well actually I don't know exactly when my machine was made but I could have purchased new one like it 10 years ago. This one looks brand new. Really good price I thought and I wanted to see if a combo machine works out for me. I didn't want to put out the big money for a Hamer or Felder only to find out that maybe a combo is not what I want. I,and I know better ,didn't research the machine properly before I bought it. It turns out that this relatively new 21st century machine by Grizzly is totally abandoned by the manufacturer. They discontinued the machine for something else ,so I guess they discontinued the support for a machine that they sold as well.
It's a gem magic and I'm in Canada.
I've been a combo user right from the start and would not go back - the low cost and the small footprint of the combo more than offsets the minor inconvenience of changing modes from time to time.
Please post about your experience...
Eye of Newt is scarce worldwide due to supply chain issues. Prices have tripled for all Magic parts at Diagon Alley supply houses.
(sorry.)
As usual, @Pantalones... is speaking sense. @MJ though - there is a reason the cruciatus curse was invented...
I have a deWalt planer/thicknesser that has gave trouble for over 20 years. When it did fail, all it needed was a motor capacitor - no need to buy an original there. An earthquake broke the back motor cover, and there are no new parts available so there is a somewhat unattractive donor cover, but it works.
In the end, if you want only shiny original parts on any tool, you will have to buy two of them - then of course you will break three parts. Because Murphy...
Keeping old tools functional though is not too hard and requires just a little nous. This chap https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBch8Elwg9M restores vintage machinery (very relaxing to watch) and he makes new parts when needed - I'd hazard that most parts necessary for the function of woodworking machinery are either cheap to manufacture or so much of the machine that replacement is probably pointless. Motors, bearings, gears, rollers - all are pretty common parts in machines and even if an exact match cannot be found, it is usually possible to refurbish the existing part or have a new part machined to fit. Even if you break a casing part, they can often be fixed, or at a pinch re-cast.
What often surprises people is how little it costs to remanufacture parts compared with buying them off the shelf - it costs way less to make parts in bulk of course, but storing extra parts, managing inventory and paying the staff to look after them and distribute them is horribly expensive. Imagine making a new car out of the spares from your local dealer - if you got away with making it for 20 times more than the list price of the same car (without labour costs!!) you would be doing quite well.
This means that whilst you would not go into business selling jointers made one part at a time, making a few parts (or having them made for you) is sometimes a better option than buying spares off the shelf, even if they are available simply because the time and materials involved may well be small compared with the logistics costs of storing the parts.
Bottom line - don't worry about the parts. All machines are obsolete after a while.
But, most cars are manufactured in such vast quantities that there is an aftermarket availability for parts. Some woodworking machines as well. I started out buying old machines cheap and rebuilt what needed to be rebuilt. Found machinists to make what I couldn't find, salvaged motors from junk yards etc. Later though when it became a business fiddling with old iron could be a catastrophe! Down time because some old machine failed just was unexceptable. I eventually replaced most of that stuff with newer machines. Most of those machines are gone now because they were too big for what I require or have space for now. The big shop disappeared when someone decided to trade in his old wife for a newer model . To be fair though companies like Rockwell,Powermatic carried parts for machines that they maybe hadn't offered for years. Rockwell(Delta) bought out Walker Turner but still maintained service and parts for Walker Turner machines up until they sold out to Pentair ,that's maybe 30 years. Those old american machines were crude (any machine that uses a rubber mallet for a fine adjustment tool is crude by my definition) but really reliable! Most of those old cast iron machines are still worth restoring and restored they're worth having. Now companies seem to buy up competitors and kill them off. I guess so you have to buy new machines and hopefully from them. I bought my PM 66 ,that I presently use, about 20 years ago. In my head it's still new! I got caught out on this Grizzly machine because it just didn't dawn on me that a machine like that would be abandoned by a manufacturer that soon. When I first bought the Grizzly I opened it up and cleaned and lubed and adjusted everything. It had been very lightly used or maybe hardly used at all. No dings or scratches so it looks show room quality. It works OK ,not dazzling and I'll get my money out of it but when you really check out the guts of it it's a pretty crummy machine. When it wears out its landfill! There's a scale for the fence adjustment that is in inches but the scale for the planer is metric! Who does that?
I did a little 10 minute research on that Magic. Didn't find much except maybe they went under and maybe 40 years ago or maybe it was only a distributer that went under I couldn't tell. Legalese is a language I could never master. The machines though from some pictures I saw look substantial. If it's cheap enough.....
There have been a lot of new manufacturers these last several years. Yes, a lot of the machines are similar, and just swap paint colors and decals. But most are 100% the same. They cheapen certain assemblies in order to offer the appeal of a lower price.
And most of those machines and brands will be gone in a blink. And users of those machines will be stuck the way you are with that Grizzly.
Whenever some asks about a new name woodworking machine, I groan. I wouldn't touch a name or a model that isn't really well established.
Indeed - my perspective is to be fair from the hobbyist-with-a-view perspective. I'd quite like to do woodwork full time, but it won't pay the bills and I do genuinely enjoy my main job almost all of the time, so I'd be silly to change.
Unlike cars, woodworking machines are generally very simple, doing only a few things and at relatively low levels of precision. Appearance is also less of an issue for most users - you want a precisely matched widget in your Prius, but on a dusty jointer, it's less of a 'thing'. This makes a precisely matched OEM part a lower priority, and self-repair is a much lower risk activity.
But, Grizzly is an established brand. I don't have much experience with their stuff but I saw a promotional video on the YouTube for my model. Claims to be German designed and built in USA( which I have my doubts). Has that slick Euro look.
The machine ain't bad it's just not great and there is nothing wrong with it now but my surprise is when they revamped to newer designed machines they totally abandoned the previous model as far as service and parts!
The "magic" machine ,that started this thread ,from the pictures I saw looks to be a high quality industrial machines. Italian made. Who knows maybe they are common in Milan. A lifetime tool doesn't necessarily mean that they'll never require something. One would like to know that if you need a part you can find it. My whole point is, I guess, do your homework. If it was an Oliver or a Yates you may have to hunt but you will most likely find the part...but what is a Gem Magic?
Even Grizzly/Jet/ShopFox/Craftex (all the same machines) don’t quite carry spares, they will ship a new unit , either a motor or the entire machine as a replacement (while under warranty) . Every such machine I bought new in the past 7 years, a Jointer, a Laguna bandsaw, a planer and a dust collector had issues worth returning and I was given a new motor for the Laguna and fixed myself the other problems after being offered a replacement machine. Two days ago I picked up a used 6 X 108 Progress edge sander built in Canada, wired a new plug and turned it on, it just works and will forever with no spare.
I went to Brooklyn Tech High School were in addition to a strict academic schedule we studied pattern making,foundry,sheet metal,3 years of machine shop,drafting and numerous courses concerned with how things are made.Machinery in the pre and post war area had there castings aged to relieve the tension in the part.Today the ageing takes place in your shop. Hence parts that occasionally fail
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