I see a lot posted regarding machinery from Grizzly, Delta, General, Jet, etc. but I rarely see anything regarding Sunhill. Right now they have a contractor table saw on sale at an attractive price. I've used some Sunhill equipment and I don't see much difference between it and Grizzly. Am I missing something?
I've only had one experience with Sunhill and that's with their 8" jointer. Let me start off by saying that right now it is working very well and I'm pretty happy with it. But it wasn't easy getting to that point.
I ordered the jointer and it was shipped to my door including a liftgate on the truck. I didn't have to pay extra for the liftgate. I looked the paper work over and everything looked as I expected. But when I opened up the box that contained the base it looked wrong and then I noticed it only had a 1HP 110v motor. That was certainly wrong. They had sent me a 6" jointer by mistake somehow. Fortunately I hadn't even opened the crate that the jointer beds and fence came in but I had already popped the bands that held the two boxes together. I called Sunhill and talked to the manager. He was very sorry for the screw up and said they would send out the correct jointer the next day. They also told me to call FedEx and have them come and pick the first jointer up freight collect. Ok, they screwed up in the shipping dept. and shipped the wrong one. I can except that without getting too annoyed. But in the meantime I had to waste a bunch of hours waiting for the original delivery, waiting for the guy to pick it back up, and then wait for the second delivery. That and I also had to go through a lot of effort and a half a roll of duct tape to secure the box I'd opened back on top of the crate on top of a pallet. That took about an hour more. To make up for my inconvenience the manager included an extra set of blades. I wouldn't call it even but it was close enough.
I got the new jointer and it was much heavier, of course. When I opened the box for the base and removed it I could see that the base was bent a little. Since there was no apparent damage to the box I'd guess that the damage occured before it was boxed up. Not Sunhill's fault. The damage was more than just cosmetic but I decided to bend it back into shape instead of sending it back too. It worked ok. Also, the, "Sunhill" sticker labels on both the base and on the beds were stuck on very crooked. What the hell?! Ok, off with the labels. I wanted to make my own mobile base and I needed to know the exact height of the beds when assembled *before* I assembled it. You can't lift that sucker up and put it on top of a mobile base once it's all together. So I called and spoke to the original sales guy and asked him. I'd already looked on their website at the demensions but I guessed that the height given was to the top of the fence. The salesman said that this was the height of the beds. I took his word for it but I shouldn't have. I needed the beds to be the same height as my work bench so I could use it as an outfeed/infeed table if necessary. I spent the better part of a day cutting, welding, and then painting the base up. The beds were still in the crate so I couldn't really accurately measure it so instead I measure the base and subtracted that from the *claimed* overall height and made the mobile base accordingly. When I put the whole jointer together it was obvious that the salesman was very wrong so the mobile base I'd made was way too low. I was very pissed off and called back. The office manager lady didn't seem surprised that this particular salesman screwed up and apologized. I told her after the previous problems I'd had it was unlikely I'd be doing business with them again. She countered by offering to send me another set of knives as well as one of their $80 mobile bases for free. Sure! I'll take that and it showed that they did care about customer service. I didn't ask for anything. I just wanted to let them know that I wasn't happy so far. The new base wasn't going to solve the height problem for me so I fixed the base I'd built, (cutting lots of welds is NOT easy) and got the thing all tuned up.
I tried to get the new fence set up right but I noticed that the fence was bowed and twisted. I can deal with the slight bow but the twist made the fence useless. I called again and talked to the manager and he agreed to send me another fence. I got the fence but it was a different color and it was obviously for a different jointer. The webbing was deeper so the 2 outside mounting holes were so deep the mounting bolts were just barely long enough to work. But they did just work. But the center mounting hole was in the wrong place. That wouldn't work at all but by this point I realized that I was dealing with such incompetence that I'd better deal with this one myself. I had to redrill another 9/16" hole in the fence and countersink it to match up with the fence tilt mechanism. I painted the fence black and tuned it up and it's finally working well.
The knives were set perfectly from the factory I might add and the whole time the people I talked too were very nice and understanding. The fact that I never lost my temper with them probably helped. The beds aren't perfectly flat but very close. The fence isn't quite perfectly flat but very close. Both face joints and edge joints come out very flat so I'm happy with the performance. I have two extra sets of knives and the most heavy duty factory mobile base I've ever seen as well as a bowed and twisted jointer fence leaning up in the corner. After I got the mobile base from them I was curious what the weight capacity was and ended up talking to the same salesman. He told me it was 2000Lbs. Uh...Yeah, right. Just like with the height of the machine, he just seems to make up stuff as he goes along. When I called to talk to the manager he said about 1000Lbs and that was limited by the castors. That I'll believe. It's super beefy. So the bottom line is whether or not I'll do business with them again. Hmmm...Probably, as long as I don't have to deal with that idiot salesman. I don't remember his name but it was something Hispanic that I don't hear everyday. He was friendly but stupid. Ask for someone else if you get him on the phone and you'll probably do just fine. Everyone else there tried really hard to make me happy and that's more than I can say for my past experiences with Grizzly. Good luck with your decision. Oh, anyone want to by an awesome mobile base for an 8" jointer? I'll sell it for $50 plus shipping. I'll probably have another use for it sometime but for now it's for sale.
Bruce
I read in an article in a FWW book that you may be able to straighten out that twist. If it happened due to stress you can clamp one end and *slowly* apply torque to the other. Eventually it should give slightly and then shouldn't move again.
Might be worth a shot--if it works you'll have a spare fence as well, and if it doesn't, you lose nothing.
Chris
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