Took the plunge last week and ordered a nice new Unisaw to replace my trusty contractor’s saw. The Unisaw ships with a new 50T combo blade, so I sell the old saw with the used-but-faithful 50T Freud carbide blade.
Freight truck arrives today, I’m like a kid on Christmas morning (OK, kid on Hanukah night). Get everything unpacked and…WTF? It’s a cheesy little cheap steel blade. Overheating, crappy cutting, wood-burning joy, here I come
Thank you very much Delta, for selling a saw that if I treat it nicely can be willed to my grandkids someday, and including a shitty little blade like that. You can buy an acceptable carbide combo blade for about $45. Include one with each saw and I bet you’d get a discount on volume purchasing, and a fine piece of machinery would be ready to use out of the box without having to make another trip to the hardware store. And yes I would have gladly paid a few extra dollars knowing that I’d get a useful blade, rather than shipping a junky blade which will go into the bottom of the blade drawer, never to be used.
Grr.
Oh and the blade guard sucks. Worse than my old one. Supposed to lock in place out of the way, all it does is hover there waiting for the right moment to fall back to the table with a loud CRACK.
I will feel much better once I rip a few hunks of oak without slowing down
Time to move up to a Forrest. Difference between a Forrest and a Freud is like the difference between the Freud and the POS that came with your new saw…
Discarded saw blades make excellent children’s toys.
On a whim, I purchased a Rigid recip saw because my corded Milwalkee was broken and even the 18v Dewalt didn’t have enough torque/power for certain apps. Seemed like a good enough tool until I used it. That damned freaky quick release for the blades guarantees that blades will release while in use! Nothing beats my corded Milwalkee, so I got it repaired. The Rigid is usable for some people, I’m sure. So, I traded a hobbyist friend for some really useful stuff. (Yes, I told him about the quick release.)
Still using an old DeWalt table saw I purchased used years ago. It’s portable.
But where’s the payoff?? What toys? C’mon, tell us stories of dado blades being used as frisbees, bandsaw blades used as hula hoops, jigsaw blades used to sculpt a “Jiggy Jerry” (a la Fusilli Jerry).
Val, I feel for you. I purchased a used Unisaw and it came with about 10 blades (including a dado) that were either shite to begin with or were completely beat. It’s a good thing I only had to pay $400. Did I mention that I also got an 8" Delta jointer, some walnut, and a granite counter top for that amount? It all came out of the main library and its maintenance shop in Minneapolis when they tore it down to make way for the new building. I’ve pretty much burned up all of my tool buying karma for the next few lifetimes.
Freud works very well, but the Forrest blades simply rock.
Yeah, I have been kicking around the idea of a Woodworker II, I hear wonderful things about 'em.
However I have a perfectly good set of Freud blades that I kept (rip, fine crosscut, laminate) so it’s a little hard to justify another $100; frankly I was already thinking about an aftermarket splitter and overarm blade guard (and the ones that came with the saw are certainly providing me an incentive). Maybe get a decent combo blade for breaking down sheet stock.
For the price of a WW2 I can get a Biesemeyer splitter, then it’s time to burn that bonus on something like an Excalibur guard…I’ve made plenty of decent stuff with the Freud blades however I don’t like compromising on safety.
I’m not a handyman myself, but this principle applies to a bunch of other consumer products. When i bought my first digital camera a couple of years back, i paid $1,100 and it came with a memory card big enough to hold five pictures at hi-res jpeg quality, and one (yes, 1!!!) picture in highest-quality RAW mode.
Mine too although I only paid $300 for my camera. It also came with the crappiest batteries known to man. They died after half a day. I thought that the camera was going to cost me an arm and a leg in batteries but the Duracells that I put in next lasted for months.
It’s kind of like digital camera only shipping with a token size memory card. Of course my D100 didn’t even include that and SLRS, film and digital are shipped without lenses.
FWIW I have a Delta contractor and though I haven’t been able to use it much lately I still lust for a Powermatic 66. Mine came with a steel blade and I replaced it with a Freud combo blade. Bigger improcement was the Biesemeyer fence. The factory is local so I got a bargain on a cosmetic second.
NoClueBoy, thanks for your advice on recip saws. I was considering an 18V DeWalt since I already have the drill and trim saw but not now. How is the blade release on the Sawzall? Does it require a tool? I might go Porter Cable as it has a quick release that works well.
Assembly continues tonight. OK Delta, here’s another hint from ole’ Valgard (and this goes out to all manufacturers of products that will require assembly by the customer):
PUT ALL THE FREAKIN’ FASTENERS IN THE BOX
Is this so hard? And lordy don’t we all know it’s not just cabinet saws, everyone on the face of the earth has had this happen. I am now at a dead stop because I need a pair of 3/8" flat washers and a pair of 3/8" lock washers. When I go to the hardware store tomorrow at lunch I predict an MSRP of a whopping, oh, maybe 50 cents.
This is a royal PITA because it’s not that 20 of these things are required and they only put 18 in the box, but because two are required and they put NONE in the box. For a premium-priced item, spend an extra buck and throw in some extras, save us all some time and aggravation.
And on a related rant, I would really much rather see them overbuild the weakest connection so that it uses the same bolts/washers/etc as the strongest connection, because that way you get a bag which says something like ‘Contains twenty 3/8" bolts, twenty 3/8" washers and twenty 3/8" hex nuts’ rather than a laundry list of widgets in six different sizes (including English, Metric and Upper Voltan). Fine there are cases where you need a small screw someplace but keep it as simple as possible, rather than designing with what one of my old structural engineering professors referred to as “An extremely sharp pencil”.
It would just be so much easier - the factory only needs to carry one or two sizes of fasteners, the customer doesn’t have to drag out the entire socket and wrench set, and if something is missing you can go to the hardware store and buy a bag of the damn things, rather than buying just enough and finding out later that whoops, there’s one more required down the road (in a different size of course).
Padeye, the Milwalkee I have still uses the hex head key. I haven’t looked at the new ones.
As for the cordless DeWalt’s lack of power, that’s definitely a problem for me. But, as a disclaimer, let me add that I use recip almost totally just for demo, and am often in a situation that causes a bit of blade flex. The corded tool is just so strong that it works through the flex. The cordless slows down and stops. Still useful for many, many things, but irritating as hell when I have to cut, repostion, cut, reposition, etc… And with the Rigid, the blade would come out. :eek:
A cordless unit with a good quick release is the Ryobi. Some think it’s a cheap brand, but they do make some very good tools. I was using another sub’s saw on a recent trip. Nice stuff. How it might hold up in the long run, tho, I have no idea.
Here’s a funny thing. I recently got a new DeWalt 18v circular saw that could cut thru a battleship! Loads of torque/power. Cuts thru metal like a hot knife thru butter. Why can’t they make a recip like that?
No worries. This beats digging around my garage for spare 3/8" washers.
Hell, I’m an engineer by training and for the life of me I can’t figure it out. First thing I learned in reinforced concrete design is that half the cost is the forms, so make everything the same size where possible to save big bucks on labor and resizing.
There are certainly some legitimate reasons but I think a lot of it is somebody trying to show how clever they are by spending hours optimizing parts so that they can a dollar in manufacturing.
WANG (Wild-Ass eNgineering Guess): poor system engineering. Imagine you’ve got three design teams helping to make this saw a reality; Motorized Subassembly, Look & Feel, and Mounting Hardware; all of these teams work with/for Systems Engineering, or System Integration & Test.
The Motorized Subassembly Team designs the drive train and its external interfaces – the saw spindle, drill chuck, etc. – to industry standards, and uses compatible measurements throughout the rest of their area of responsibility. The Look & Feel team designs the yellow DeWalt case to meet a different set of requirements – a certain amount of watertightness, a certain tension tolerance on all bolts – and end up using one particular small case bolt over and over… but only on their subsystem. This bolt may not be in the same class or measurement group as the bolt from the MS Team. L&F and MS both neglect to pass on their bolt-choice conventions to the Mounting Hardware Team, who are simultaneously designing their bolt interfaces for strength, and using another convention altogether.
System Integration & Test makes sure all the parts work together, but Marketing never manages to get back to SI&T to tell them that non-standard fasteners are losing them sales, and so that never makes it into the requirements documents. If it’s not written down in the requirements before you start the design, odds are good that it’s going to cost a lot of money to change later on.
IKEA, on the other hand, has spoiled us greatly; their engineers design for a target cost and bend their design to the use of standard IKEA fasteners wherever possible.
Sometimes the most elegant design isn’t the most practical. Sometimes the most practical design isn’t the most pretty or ergonomic. It sounds like they erred a little too much towards the elegant.
That’s pretty good Jurph and probably not too far off the mark. And I can understand it for the subassemblies that make up a saw - the motor is built by a company that just builds motors, they aren’t going to talk to everyone who buys their product and see how they can alter their design.
But in the case of, say, my saw, the number of things that the purchaser is actually responsible for putting together is small (there’s about 7 or 8 big pieces), they are all pretty simple (as in “bolt these two pieces of cast iron together”) and there’s virtually no moving parts (OK, one item has a hinge. But it’s preassembled). And these are parts that get used for one thing - this type of saw (unlike a motor which could go into anything).
A wonderful example (since it’s what I’m stuck on right now due to the fucking washer situation, not that I’m bitter) is how the fence rails fasten to the iron tabletop. If you aren’t familiar with it, the top is a flat slab of cast iron and the rails are two long pieces of angle iron. One screws to the front edge of the top, the other to the back edge. Two screws front, two screws back. Simplicity.
The front rail fastens with flat-head bolts that go into non-threaded holes (there’s a web on the front edge of the tabletop) and then you have to stick a washer, lock-washer and nut onto the end to snug it all down.
Meanwhile the back rail uses hex-head bolts, which go into threaded holes on the back edge of the tabletop.
The front rail needs a flathead bolt in a recessed hole so that the head is flush with the part it holds. OK, since you have to build one rail that way, build the back rail that way as well and use the same screw. It’s not critical on the back but so what, you just made part management simpler. And there’s no reason to use slightly different bolts (lengths, diameters, threads, etc) on front and back, pick the strongest one you need and just use that on the less-critical part as well.
I like the term “WANG”. I’ve always used SWAG (scientific wild ass guess) myself. This is as opposed to the WAG used by non-engineering or non-technical masses. (But I’m no chauvanist, not me! )
The other possibility is that Delta has a fairly mature product that never gets the attention of the aforementioned engineering teams. Perhaps said teams made that mistake at some point in the past and its now being perpetuated by the Taiwanese manufacturing engineers that make the saws, much to their own puzzlement.
Anyway Val, if you don’t like the missing connectors, don’t ever buy something from Harbor Freight tools. You have been warned.
Heh, Harbor Freight has an outlet in Vacaville just a short ways up 80 from me. I’ve been needing some bar clamps made of the finest grade zinc
I can see the reason being as simple as it was done that way once and nobody wants to put the time into some retooling (even if the retooling consists of “Change from 1/4 inch to 3/8 inch bit on the drill press”). I’m going to send Delta a nice letter with my suggestions and the advantages I can see to them, we’ll see if they respond. Don’t expect massive recalls of all their products overnight to take advantage of my ideas.
That’s the problem with being an Evil Genius, if you don’t do it yourself it takes AGES to see plans come to fruition…
Got my missing pieces today for 30 cents. Really went all out and got twice as many as I need.
I’m going to defend Delta on this one. Most people who need a $1500 table saw will already own one or more top quality blades, and these blades can be darn expensive themselves. Delta could take one of three approaches with respect to blades in their new saws.
They could include a top of the line blade, but that would add an unnecessary expense to many people buying the saw since they will already own all the blades that they need.
They could include a middle of the line blade, but the blade is a very important component in the quality of the cut. Many people would try out their new saw with the factory installed blade only find themselves disappointed in their $1500 purchase and unaware that they are seeing the limitations of the blade and not the saw.
They could include an obviously piece of poo blade for those folks who don’t have a blade at all just so they can get their saw up and running.
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