Customer Reviews

Shop Fox D2057A Adjustable Mobile Base, Small

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

Other than the initial horse work it will take to get your saw into/onto this base, everything else is cake. It is solid with no signs of stress or bowing. The tubular steel ensures that. The castors had no problem with my Jet cabinet saw. It was nice to easily tuck that beast of a saw against the wall in my limited-spaced workshop some people call a garage. It was just as easy pulling it out for use again.

I've had this base under the Grizzly G1023S table saw in my garage shop for four years now. It has performed flawlessly. My saw rolls and pivots as easily as you'd expect a 360-pound saw would. I try not to roll over the expansion seams in the floor, but when I have to, the base feels solid.

The leveling/locking feet work really well, but bending down to spin them is less convenient than the foot lever on some other mobile bases.

I like the four-wheel, four-point stability of this base over the three-point arrangement of other bases.

So why only 3 stars? When I was assembling the base, three of the bolt holes stripped before I could even compress the lock washers. I had to keep trying holes until I found some that held. This did not inspire confidence and has always been a nagging concern. What's the difference between the stripped holes and the ones that held? They all looked the same. Is my base going to collapse on me in the middle of a cut? I shouldn't have to worry about this and I shouldn't be reading other reviews with similar problems years later.

This really is a heavy duty mobile base. I bought the Grizzly 14" band saw (G0555) at the Grizzly showroom in Bellingham, WA and picked one of these up to mount it on for moving around in the limited room I have for my garage-converted wood shop to park the band saw out of the way when I am not using it. It assembles quickly has good instructions and tips for installation (maybe, it's obvious, but they do point out it's a lot easier to assemble the stand for your table or band saw first and mount that on the mobile base. In fact, that allowed me to back my van up to the opening of my garage, carefully turn and tip the 167 lb. band saw laying in the back up on end and carefully slide it into place on its assembled stand in the base and never have to lift a thing or call anybody else to help with the back buster of lifting the band saw to get it in my garage and mobilized to move wherever I want it. My one nit pick is I wish it had a foot release brake instead of the hand turned knobs for loosening or tightening the rubber leveler feet that are used to hold the swivel caster side of it in place when you are not moving it. Also, some kind of spacer/tensioning clamp on the rails to take up the space and hold the saw base stand snuggly in place would be nice but I just used some wood shims and that works.

This seems to be a fairly solid stand, but beware of the casters. The center portion is hard plastic covered with a hard rubber. I have one for my table saw and one for my shaper, about a month old and with four of the casters the hard rubber cover has broken off. I don't expect the other four casters to last long either. Unfortunately, the only casters I have found so far with the same hole distances are the same casters. Now I'm looking into replacing the wheels but need to determine the correct hole bore. I wonder if I can roll it around on the hard plastic wheels. With a 500 lb saw on the base, this is not the time to have to deal with replacing the wheels. Look for a base with solid rubber wheels.

The side bars are about 3/16" smaller than the corner pieces that they fit into so ALL the stress is bourn by the two bolts that hold the sides and corners together. The bolts are just held by threaded holes in the 3/32" thick side bars so they strip out easily. At the full 29.5" extension, the side bars are only held by two bolts, 3/4" of an inch apart, screwed into a thin soft metal. The engineering term for this is "scary". The unit would be much better if the side bars fit tightly in the corner pieces and the bolts just served to keep the bars from sliding in and out. This base should only be used is situations where a sudden short drop of the load won't injure the user or cause the load to tip over. The base holds the load about 1 inch over the floor.

Bought this mobile base with a Table Saw Extension Kit, sized to fit my Jet. Of the four swivel casters, there was one that was just passable as being fairly smooth in rotation on the upper bearing - the other three were unusable, being stiff and catching as they completed their rotation - to the point of stopping. The axle of the casters is wider than the width of the wheel and allows side to side slop movement of the wheel. There appears to be no support for the wheel other than the hard plastic spinning on the axle. The wheel material is hard and was difficult to roll around on my particle board shop floor, and over sawdust. I purchased replacement casters at Lowes, finding solid rubber wheels that are of greater quality than those included, and that rotate very smoothly on their upper bearings. The bolt hole layout nearly matched the mounting brackets of the mobile base, and was easily modified on the drill press for more accuracy.

The rails are undersized for the mounting brackets on the corners of the mobile base. There is considerable slop in the joint between the two pieces, which is intended to be remedied by tightening bolts into threaded holes in the rails. The rail metal is soft and can be easily stripped as the base is assembled. The total weight of the saw is suspended on the bolts holding tight in the thin/soft rail metal. I purchased 1" steel tubing to replace the included rails and ran bolts fully thru the tubing/mounting brackets to tighten the rails into the corners. This alleviated the slop and pulled the base together as an integral unit that adequately supports the weight of the saw.

Shipping was a nightmare - boxes are very soft and arrived torn and open, exposing the contents (I wasn't home to refuse the UPS delivery). The plastic bags containing the bolts, washers and nuts were torn open and parts strewn throughout the boxes. The bolt heads are of some unknown measurement (not SAE or metric) - a crescent wrench would probably work pretty well. However, I replaced the bolts and nuts with quality SAE hardened steel product.

In general, welds are rough and paint finish is chipped and contains fingerprints of the workers - (maybe I could used these to trace back to the negligent parties!) - there is even light rust on some portions of the corner pieces.

I didn't feel like returning the order after paying nearly $36.00 in freight to get it to my shop, and have spent more than the original cost of the base and extension kit in improving it, considerable time and effort in making modifications as well as time and travel for an hour each way to purchase materials.

I recently assembled a DeWalt mobile base for their thickness planer, and found it a joy to do. Parts fit well, finish was great, and quality and attention to detail were self-evident. I have some HTC bases as well, and found their workmanship to be excellent as well.

So, will I purchase from ShopFox again - no way! I have been considering purchasing their molder and a jointer, but now that I have seen the quality of their product, I will steer clear. My friends at the woodworking club will also become aware of my experience.

There's no doubt this is one heavy duty base. The rails and support plates are heavy gage steel and I have little doubt they would support the 700 pounds Grizzly says it will. But I have a few complaints: 1) it is very hard to get the base moving with my 400+ pound Grizzly G1018 jointer on the base (yes, I assembled it properly). It is also a bear to turn. 2) Even though this is the base Grizzly recommends for my jointer, the smallest width achieveable with the base is a full 2" wider than my jointer. I've had to cut a spacer rail to take up the slop so the jointer doesn't move in the base. 3) when tightening the bolts into the rails, 2 bolts stripped out.

In contrast, the Delta mobile base for my Unisaw fits and rides like a dream. Delta has been taking a lot of heat lately for quality, but they sure have the best mobile base out there

Junk for sale here. Bolts and screws were neither English nor Metric. Many bolts stripped in crudely machined threads, and I had to order replacements from Grizzly (which were different again in size from those received with the order). Parts fit poorly and are very poorly machined. Soft metal in threaded "inserts" (which support all the weight, and which are merely threaded holes through steel stock -- not inserts). This base is advertised to hold up to 1,200 lbs. My jointer/planer weighs 700 lbs and within moments after placing it on the base one of the mobile base wheels literally disintegrated under the weight of the planer -- it looks like they took small diameter wheels and encased them with a ring of a rubber-like compound. Avoid this poorly manufactured product.

Unfortunately I spent an hour assebmling before realizing how poor quality it was. The caster mounts are all bent to different angles so it wobbles a good 1/2" or more. I'm afraid to bend it as that will weaken it. The bolts are such poor quality the heads are not standard sizes and you have to go at it with several wrenches because you don't know what will work for each bolt. There was a good bit of rust on mine out of the box. ALso, one of the rotating casters hits a bolt so it will not turn all the way around. I'm trying to get this returned as fast as possible and will most likely make my own base. Sigh...

I bought this to use with a G0593 jointer. Installation was pretty straight forward and the base looks good. The problem is it just does not work! The only way you can move this base is by pushing it hard enough so the casters will slide on the surface. The swiveling casters always tend to lock to prevent the base from moving and the other ones don't rotate very well anyway. The base seems pretty sturdy for the 400+lbs jointer but the casters are just of cheap quality. Of course it's hard to return now that a heavy machine is on it. I would NOT buy this or recommend it to anyone.