are the older Jet tablesaws any good? i've noticed on another NG a Jet #250205 table saw for sale, its 13 years old and only $300 cdn. i'm a beginning woodworker on a limited budget and i don't want to spend too much. please email me with any responses/opinons as i don't get to check this NG as much as i'd like to.
thanks, gsl
It depends. In the late 80's I bought a 14" Jet band saw that was an a b s o l u t e p i e c e o f c r a p. It was so bad that the owner of the company finally parted it out and used the heavier castings for a boat anchor and the lake he kept his boat on rejected the parts.
So when did they get better? Pre-Roto Creme White they (Jet) put out a line of blue painted machines. All indications are that these were better than earlier models.
There was also a logo style change. I want to say that when Jet went to the riveted on logo they got better, i.e., the older adhesive backed logos are a warning sign of impending crapola. I can identify it from photographs but can't describe it but to make a long story short, any time I see this adhesive back stuck on logo style I break out in hives.
There are also other tell tale signs of crappy Chiwanese manufacturing that are pretty subtle. Mainly, and believe it or not, it's the cheesy labels they used that identify the crappiest of the crappy.
UA100
================================= I honestly purchased a BLUE JET CABINET SAW in the late 80's after reading a review of several saws in a magazine... The review was good and the proice was right... lol...
Anywho.... today that same saw is in my shop and I am still 100 percent happy with it... I have had absolutely no problems with it at all....
Still does not answer the original posters question... The only way that I know of is to actually made a lot of test cuts with the saw and see how it functions...
Bob Griffiths .
Right you are Keith. It's like they were hoping the label would fall off, and you wouldn't know who to blame : )
Just to add a little more complexity to the answer, the original poster is in Canada, and the JET tools sold here aren't always the same tools you get in the States.
Rob
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"Unisaw A100" wrote ...
The blue Jet suff was EXCELLENT. No ifs, ands or buts.
I bought one of the first blue Jet left tilt cab saws (JTAS-10XL). I think it was in 1997 or so. For quite awhile, there were no changes at all between it and the later cream colored versions of the saw, except that mine had nicer chrome handwheels than the newer ones. Lately, they've made some changes to the fence (and of course they're selling those combined router/saw packages now). I think they finally went back to those nice chrome handwheels. It's been a great saw - very smooth running, with nearly zero effort height adjustments (I can still give the handle a spin and have it make many revs by itself). I've looked at the saw many times over the years with indicators, and it just stays dead on. I did finally adjust the top a few years ago to correct a deviation from parallel of the miter slots versus the blade of about .003 or so over the length of the miter slot. This didn't really make much of a difference but I was installing a new longer fence rail so I thought it would be a good time to deal with it. The original extension table was garbage, but everything else about the saw has been great.
Tim Carver snipped-for-privacy@twocarvers.com
I bought my Blue JET contractors saw right before they switched to the white version. I have loved it from day 1 and don't know how I would need anything better.
The story I remember hearing was that Jet changed the color for an annivesary model and it was so popular that they decided not to go back to blue. It may be BS but supposedly there's no difference between the blue and white saws. BTW, anyone know where I can find some cast blue wings for a contractors saw real cheap?
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