GRR-Ripper Review

by Dennis E. Peacock

Well....I got my GRR-Rippers and had a chance to watch the DVD, put them together and play with them on my TS, router table and jointer tonight. Here is my initial review:

They are well made and the flexibility of the configuration of them are something. The assembly was easy and the pads on the bottom of each leg REALLY hold the stock very well. The DVD is well worth the money as they go through how to assemble it, how to use it on the various tools and cover the safety aspects of the GRR-Ripper during use.

Here are the GRR-Rippers after I had assembled them. I say "them" because I bought two.

This pic shows the set up to use one of them on cutting some poplar that would normally be too short for me to feed through by hand. One thing to take note on using the GRR-Rippers: Blade height is a serious consideration BEFORE you make a cut as well as the position of the gripping feet! DAMHIKT!

The next pic shows the resulting cut on a standard Amana Rip blade. Before, when feeding by hand, I would have noticable saw marks in the cut edge of the wood. You can see that the newly ripped edge of the board is smooth and free of saw marks. A nice improvement of cut quality for ripping such a short piece of wood. I also noticed that the safety factor on this type of cut is very much improved over hand feeding and carrying the off-cut piece through the entire cut process is great as well since I don't have to worry about the off-cut floating around the spinning saw blade.

The next pic shows the results of cutting a few pieces of 1/4" thick slices of the same poplar. Once again, the cuts are smooth and saw mark free.

This last pic shows a setup for using two of them for ripping a long piece of wood by using what they call the "leap frog" method. Moving one GRR-Ripper behind the other during the cut so you don't lose control of the wood throughout the entire cut. I examined the freshly sawn edges and the edges are still saw mark free.

On the router table they work equally well. The control of cut is very good and no snipe marks on the tail end of the boards. This alone made me happier.

On the jointer, I did notice that I had better control of the wood and my hands and fingers were noticeably at a safer distance than previously feeding by hand. I also noticed that there was less vibration to my hands during the jointing process as the pads on the feet absorbed a good bit of the vibration while the wood was being jointed.

Overall, I would say that the GRR-Ripper is a very good. Now if I can just stay in the habit of using them!!!!

Mike Circo observes: They seem to encourage the user to work without a splitter and guard. I have homemade push blocks, sticks and jigs to accomplish the same types of things on my Unifence but keep the guards and splitter in place. Just my work method and paranoia. I keep my safety equipment in place for every cut which allows it.