First some words about me and then the question.
My first employment was in the automotive machine shop that my father managed. Later on, I ran the place.
A boyhood interest in radio brought me a ham radio license and when I was 25 I went to work for Hughes Aircraft (later GM-Hughes) as an electronics technician. In the next 30 years at Hughes I was at various times: assembly line supervisor, senior research assistant, member of the technical (engineer), engineering group head, retired, contract consultant. When Raytheon bought Hughes, my contact was terminated and I was asked to hire on with Raytheon, which I did for a couple of years before I could no longer stand working for them. This brings me to today when I have time to pursue a long-time interest in woodworking. A couple of "woodshop" classes and the construction of about half of my house is pretty much my experience so far.
I have always been a "hands on" guy and a voracious reader; in fact, I'm primarily self-taught in my fields of interest, pretty much learning by making mistakes [g]. Some course work in photography proved to me that I was a damn good darkroom technician, but an artist I am not. I'm sure the same applies to woodworking. So, I take great delight in reading this group as well as FWW, et cetera.
By now, you're saying this belongs in the "How did you get into woodworking thread" so let me veer to the question:
Why do woodworkers put up with such crappy tooling and machinery?
My loving wife is encourging me to buy whatever I want for my shop so I am in the market (I think) for some new tools. (This is why I will continue to wear my wedding ring in the shop, but I digress) I have been reading this group and all of the other references I can find for reviews and opinions and frankly I appalled at what I'm finding.
In my former jobs, I have literally specified, approved, purchased and used several million dollars worth of machinery, electronics test equipment and components. *Never* would I, or my employers, put up with buying stuff that was in the sorry state that seems to be the norm for woodworking equipment. Neither would our customers put up with us supplying products of similar quality.
As a radio amateur I put together a number of Heathkit radios. These were of course, "kits"; it even said so in the company name. I suggest in the interest in truth-in-labeling that woodworking equipment suppliers should be required to add "kit" to their names. For example, the "Stanley Plane Kit" company.
The instructions would say, "Unpack your plane kit and disassemble the pieces. Finish the manufacturing process by, flattening the sole, filing the throat, adjusting the frog, grinding and honing the chipbreaker, flattening the back of the iron and refining the edge. Reassemble the pieces and adjust for a proper cut."
The instructions for Marples chisel kits would include instructs on retempering, regrinding and honing the blade (Other chisel kit manufactures could leave out the retempering part.)
If I believe the reviews, even a $2000 Powermatic PM66 table saw is a kit. The instructions would say something like, "Throw away the crappy table extension that was broken in shipment and build a new one out of hard Maple banded in Rosewood." Additional instructs would tell how to make shims to get the iron extension wings flush with the tabletop and file the miter gauge so it doesn't scratch the table. And, "Oh, by the way, we sold you a "saw" but if you want to actually cut something, you'll have to buy a "saw blade" separately and that motor cover you see in all of the pictures is extra too."
The Grizzly table saw kit would include instructions for contacting the trucking company that dropped it off the truck, to make a claim.
The General International table saw kit would include instructions for completing the manufacturing process by drilling the holes required to attach the "Made In Canada" fence to the "Made in the Far East" saw.
There have been millions of words written about arbor run out, table flatness, aligning the blade to the miter gauge slots, getting the miter gauge tight in the slots, getting the fence parallel to the blade, poorly designed blade guards, lousy dust collection, making new table inserts and on and on. All of this over a rather simple piece of machinery.
I very recently assembled a Jet 1100 dust collector kit. In this case, I knew it was a kit that required assembly, but why didn't they include the tap that I needed to chase the threads to get the paint out of them so the screws would go in without galling? A half hour job turned into two hours spent chasing down a tap.
What's up with this?