General International, Canwood, King Canada, and Busy Bee. These are the four brands readily available here in Canada. I can find a limited quantity of Jet tools around as well as some others. The Box stores of course have some Delta, Rigid, Black and Decker and such.
Now in my experience the General and Canwood tools seem almost identical. Speaking to the store rep at the House of Tools (where Canwood is the house brand), the jointers ARE identical with the general having more attention to detail (tighter specifications, better paint jobs... etc). Now in the case of the 8" jointer I was looking at I could get the GI for $1800 or the Canwood for $900 (for those who care I ended up with a 6" GI for $800, mainly due to space in my shop and resale value). A friend has the 8" Canwood, and admits that he has to use a little more finesse than he has to on General tools to get it accurate. I hear similar things about Grizzly.
I have no experience with King, although I see Costco selling them these days. Lost of people sell them but I don't know anybody (personally) that owns one. Does anybody have a comment?
Finally Busy Bee. Driven by the store, never stopped in. I get nervous with tools that are just price too low, there has to be a point where quality really drops off. But then again all the model above are produced overseas.
Anyway, just looking for opinions on these brands of tools for the remaining equipment I need to buy.