Does anyone have any experience and or comments about the Craftex machinery available from Busy Bee here in Canada? Their 8″ jointer looks awfully attractive. Also, King seems to have very reasonable prices on their machinery…
Edited 10/31/2007 1:23 pm ET by JulianBE
Edited 10/31/2007 1:23 pm ET by JulianBE
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Craftex is BB,s brand name for generic Chinese machinery. It's a bit like Grizzly, but with a smaller choice. The jointer BB sells today is likely to be the same as Grizzly had a couple of years ago. That's good in a way, because you can go on line to download a Grizzly manual. Craftex manuals are written in inscrutable pidgin English, and what little information they contain may not pertain to the actual machine you get.
The only Craftex I own is a 6" jointer which I've had for a few years without a problem. I have it on wheels, and move it around the shop a lot and it's quite robust. It was set up pretty accurately out of the box. It's reasonably well machined and the fence is easy to adjust. I've had to adjust the outfeed table once. The blades are on jack screws, so easy to change with just a straightedge on the outfeed table. Replacement blades are reasonably priced when on sale, which seems to be most of the time. For the price I paid, I'm quite happy. Busy Bee does sell other brands, and has a decent reputation, though I can't speak to their warranty or service since I've never had to use them. The staff at my local store aren't the sharpest pencils, though most of them seem to be woodworkers. (BB also sells metalworking machinery.) I've found it best to do my homework before I shop there, because they have only the most obvious answers.
Hope this helps, Jim
Hey, thanks for that very helpful reply - just what I was hoping for.
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