Delta Rant

Just to make a minor typo correction - 24 YEARS old is what qualifies for OWWM (Old Woodworking Machinery). Plenty of very nice looking antique lathes on the site...

"Owen Lowe" wrote: Just to make a minor typo correction - 24 YEARS old is what qualifies for OWWM (Old Woodworking Machinery). (clip) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Ummm, Owen--I think EOR was being sarcastic.

"Leo Lichtman" wrote in news:vE8xg.459929$ snipped-for-privacy@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net:

I agree wholeheartedly. Now that Black and Decker owns Dewalt, Delta and Porter Cable, look for any competition to go down the drain if you want to buy an American Name. While I try to spend my money on American tools, it looks like that's an outmoded way of thinking. If they are all made in Chiwan, what difference does it make? As for SERVICE NET, What a joke. I tried to order parts for both Porter cable and Delta and was sent there. It wouldn't take my credit card for some reason. After trying to call them direct and then having to settle for email traffice. I finally gave up and found my own parts.

Yep. I've been buying Delta for a while, and they're quickly putting themselves on my s$%# list. Took three e-mails to "ServiceNet" and two to Delta, plus a phone call over the course of a month and a half to get a manual for my lathe. The first one tool I bought from them had a couple of missing pieces because I bought it as a display model, and they sent replacements for nothing and they arrived in a couple of days. Now after spending about $6000 with them in the past nine years or so, they've taken up being a bunch of knuckleheads who can't even be bothered to answer their damn phone.

Living in the home town of Black & Decker (Baltimore, MD) the woodworking guild I am a member of has some advantages. B&D has invited the guild members to many Engineering/Marketing sessions and invite comments. I don't know if they listen to us or not. But one suggestion I strongly urge on them is to keep the grades of tools separate! As an example, being a turner I don't remember the names and grades of Saw Blades. I suggest they keep the Top-of-the-line saw blades with the name they now have, and keep the BORG grade saw blades with the name it now has. And not to change the quality of either! Changing the name would confuse the buyer, and the reputation of each would suffer. The Marketing people I mentioned this to agreed, or they tried to put on a face like it.

I'm not sure I understand your comment about competition amongst the names. The better tools should still be better than the BORG quality tools. This is assuming they keep the quality of each 'brand' of tool as it stands now.

mike

Karl B wrote:

Yes, Keep the same quality with a name.

I watched Sears keep the name of their tools but changed the quality downward, to a point that all that they have left is junk, at high prices

It went like this. 50 years ago when I was buying tools, sears had three brands (grades) of tools, The Craftsman which was the absolute top of the line. I bought and use those tools every commercially every day for 40 years with out them wearing out, still have them today 50 years later. Then they had the next brand of a lower grade called the Sears brand,good for household use, and finally they had the poorest of the poor, the use a couple of times and throw away brand called Dunlap. Made of very poor metal which required heavy thick tools.

As time went on, they dropped the Dunlap brand, and move the Dunlap grade up to calling it the Sears brand, and the Sears brand they moved up to the Craftsman brand, doing away with the really high quality tools.

Over time you know what happened, what they now call Craftsman brand tools are of what was the Dunlap quality tools. In years past I have had that quality of tools bend and break. You have only to have a cheap tool break once causing you to ricochet around a piece of machinery leaving your skin and blood everywhere to realize that it is a bargain to pay for quality tools.

So much for keeping a brand name without also keeping the quality.

I agree that when they keep a brand name that they should also keep the same quality, for such is their reputation built on.

Zap

mike vore wrote:

Somewhere in there was the Companion name. I think that was basically what you are calling Sears, and then when they dropped the use of Dunlap, they started calling them Companion.

Actually, I disagree that Craftsman was ever "absolute top of the line." My 1960 era table saw was not markedly different than the last one made by Emerson in the '90s. They reduced the price by going to stamped steel instead of cast iron for the extension wings, plastic instead of metal (albeit cheap metal) for handles, flat bar instead of geared adjustment for the rip fence (which was never that good in any iteration).

If you don't believe me, go find a '60s era contractor saw by Sears and compare it to a comparable year contractor saw by Delta (or then Rockwell). Worlds apart.

I think Sears got a reputation for quality based on their money back guarantee on their wrenches. In actuality, it wasn't so much that the wrenches were that great. Wrenches are hard to break. How many thousands of wrenches out of billions of wrenches sold do you think they need to start worrying about (that's like one in a million--not much effect on the bottom line)? I figured that out as a marketing gimmick when Ace put the same guarantee on their "Master Mechanic" wrenches.

I've had so many screaming disappointments with Sears (power) tools from the late '60s and early '70s that when I finally discovered the difference after buying a Bosch jigsaw or a Porter-Cable router, I vowed never again to buy a Sears power tool. And I never will.

Their wrenches are OK, they were never "top of the line" compared to Snap-On or Mac Tools but they were good, workmanlike tools--I did manage to break one once, a socket, got an impact socket which is what I should have been using in the first place on that job and never had another problem.

The "Craftsman Professional" tools are not too bad. Next time you're in a Sears take a look at their jigsaws and you'll find that the "Craftsman Professional" jigsaw _is_ a Bosch. Now, I've had people claim that it has been "cheapened" somehow other than by being painted black and having a Sears label stuck on it, but I've never seen an actual side by side comparison of parts that confirms this and suspect that it would cost more for Sears to have Bosch redesign the tool than to simply buy what they were selling with the different color and different label. The only reason to buy it in preference to a Bosch-labelled Bosch would be to get the Sears parts list--if Sears continues to function as they have in the past they'll have parts inventory for that saw until the Second Coming.