Flux, Flex, and Other

For those of you not following the story…  Here’s parts 1 and 2.

Delta just called me.  One of the repair shops that is an hour or so away is going to come to my house, haul it out of the basement, pick up the saw, take it to their shop to repair, and then bring it back to my house.  That’s a lot of lugging around a 300 pound hunk of cast iron!

It took me a while to get to the right person at Delta to handle this, but I have to say I’m pleased with the result (assuming it goes through as planned).  The people I’ve spoken with have been very nice and seemed eager to help me, and (honestly… not “you’re supposed to apologize when the customer complains”) apologetic that their product had problems.  Their official policy is that it’s my bag to get the saw to them — it’s my fault for living in the boonies so I could drive it to them or ship it to them on my dollar.  But since I called, told them what I have been dealing with, they had the power to change the policy to make me, the customer, happy.

I’ll keep you posted on Act 4: The Extraction (I think she’s too big to get out the door, so they may have to disassemble it…)

Another thing I wanted to do while we were here, now that I have more space to devote to a workshop, was to watch EBay and Craig’s List to see if I could find any jewels in the area of low priced, high quality tools. I set up my RSS reader to watch the Craig’s List > Charlottesville > Tools feed, and saw a lot of stuff I didn’t want go by every couple of days. I mean, I WANT the propane fueled forklift, but I can’t say I have any real use for it.

Then, one day, there it was. Brand new Delta Tablesaw, still in the box, for $200. I called the guy selling it, and got some details. It was a 1 horsepower contractor saw, pretty much capable of doing anything I would need for the forseeable future. I went to pick it up, and as advertised, the thing was brand new. Tape still on the box seams.

The guy and I hefted it in the back of my car (it weighs about 185 pounds) and I drove it home. I got a neighbor to help me lug it down my basement stairs and set to work assembling it. It took about 2 hours… Last step: bolt on the cast iron extension wings. I put the first one on but the tops did not align. I spun it and tried the other way, but no joy — the mounting holes drilled in the table were drilled at an angle, so the table could not line up flush.

To make many angry phone calls short, Delta told me I could take it to, or ship it at my expense to, their licensed repair center — over an hour drive away. Or I could return it to Lowe’s (did I mention it still had the original Lowe’s bar code on the outside of the box? Nice…)

I had an awesome experience at Lowes. They took the mess of half assembled saw with shredded box and gave me a store credit (since there was no receipt). They no longer stock that saw anywhere, so I upgraded to the 1 1/2 horsepower, bigger, badder saw with a stupendously nice fence system. By returning the saw for the full original sales price, getting a credit back for the sales tax and applying a 10% off coupon I had, I now have a $600 + tax saw/fence package for a total of $400 out of pocket. Sweet.

But wait.

So I repeated the put it in the car (with a forklift at Lowe’s this time — the new one weighs just under 300 pounds), lug it down the stairs (Patty’s folks were in town, so we unpacked it in the car and walked each piece down the stairs), and assemble it routine. This was more complex, so it took about 5 hours. Tables aligned great!

So the other night, I just finished all the alignments and fine tuning (fence to blade, blade to miter track, blade 90/45 to table, etc) and was going to cut my first hunk of maple. Went to raise the blade, turned the dial to raise it and <plink> a worm gear falls out of the bottom of the saw and the blade drops inside with a <thunk>.

So I called Delta, again. This time I got someone better who is going to send a licensed tech to my house to fix all of my issues. We’ll see how that goes, but hopefully soon my shop will be humming with the sounds of a functioning table saw. I’ll keep you posted.