DELTA Unisaw - Buyer Beware!!!!!

[michael baker]

A brand new Delta X5 36-L31X-BC50 was delivered to my house today....and i had to send it back.

the cabinet had 2 dime sized rust spots that were clearly coming thru from under the paint. this prompted us to check the rails, fence, and extension table. the rails featured plenty of their own rust spots including about 10" of corrosion on the fence locking rail. the "Biesmeyer" fence was noticably warped along the left side laminate. the extension table looked fine with the exception of low grade support framing.

the fella who delivered it (who also does setup) claimed that the Unisaws are now made overseas and that he has noticed a sharp decline in quality over the last 6 months. maybe we just got the Delta box-o-sh*t, but it was bad enough that we didn't want another Delta.

we got us a General 650 instead.

[Doug Kanter]

Might be a good idea to write to Delta and let them know that a whole bunch of people just saw your note online.

[firstjois]

Phewie! Better than that, post Delta's ****.com and we can all send Delta a copy!

Josie

[Swingman]

Smart move ... was just looking at some of Delta's latest big tool offerings at a local dealer here yesterday. Not impressed. Mine own Unisaw is not all that old, but I am damn glad that it is as old as it is.

[RonB]

As I posted earlier, the famous Unisaw appears to be heading into decline. However, this post is really disheartening.

Sorry about your problem. Can I suggest you take a look at Jet or Grizzly?

[Chris C]

I saw one being assembled in my local woodcraft the other day. On the back it stated "assembled in USA from foreign and US components" The motor was made in Brazil (looked awfully small for a 3 hp) and the trunion castings looked a lot like the Jet cabinet saw castings.

The guy putting it together was having a hard time putting the switch on. Seems that the switch was different than what the directions showed and he was going to have to drill some holes to make it fit. For what one of those saws costs, you would expect not to have to drill holes to put it together.

Lets hope that B&D will improve things......

Chris

[Andy Dingley]

You reckon ?

The last B&D drill I have in working order is over 30 years old.

The one I actually use is a Bridges that's 50 years old.

None of the B&D pieces of junk I've bought in the last 10 years is still working.

[Edwin Pawlowski]

You can count on it. Rather that a mix of foreign and US components, it will all come from one country.

[AL]

Heh heh.

[michael baker]

I would be surprised if Delta reps don't keep a finger on this board. maybe making my experience public will help get their quality control back on track - it'd be a shame for the Delta brand name to suffer lasting tarnish. ;-)

[Doug Kanter]

Yeah. Malaysia.

[Unisaw A100]

Probably a good reason for this is onna 'count of the Jet was backwards injineered using a Unisaw.

Still, your statement is correct.

Only time will tell.

UA100

[Unisaw A100]

Interestingly enough there was a Delta tech guy that used to hang out on one of the magazine sponsored forums. He did a lot for people there and never did anything to embarrass the company. He was probably one of the most respected posters. Anyway, one day he was gone (from the forum) and via the back channel it was told that he was told by Delta to not post. Somehow I don't think Delta has the insight/foresight/sightfullness to understand things like "alternate avenues" for keeping the finger on the pulse of the customership.

They will cease business before they ever confront their own problems. OK, that's a lie. They'll cease business and then blame it all on imported machinery.

It's never their fault. No really. It was in all the papers.

UA100

[D. J. Dorn]

I can say that at least one person chose not to go with Delta based on information I've seen here - went with a Griz 1023SL and have been very happy.

Don

[RonB]

Same here. Three years ago I started my upgrade search pretty much favoring a Unisaw. This was based on experience with 20-30 year old machines. Unfortunately, when I started looking at the new ones I put on the brakes.

I Have had my 1023s for three years now and frankly it does a fine job of replacing the 20-30 year old Unisaw vision. As I posted a little earlier, I recently saw a brand new Unisaw in a local store and it has gone downhill in the past 2-3 years.

I am old enough to remember when nearly everything that came from Japan was cheap crap. This has been replaced with Honda, Toyota and Lexus. Now that good machine tools are coming from the east the locals had better get their act together. We may be a patriotic bunch to a point but as consumers, with limited funds, we are fickle.

[Leon]

Wow, another company that uses the Oldsmobile philosophy.

[patrick conroy]

C'mon - they make a heck of a toaster oven! And their Weed-Whacker's pretty good too! :)

[J. Clarke]

Hope it's better than their rice steamer. I went through two of those and said to Hell with it and spent the bucks for Japanese home-market Panasonic.

[Prometheus]

Depends on what you get- I've only got two B & D tools, a handheld jigsaw and a stationary (sort of) miter saw. The jigsaw is the worst [jigsaw] POS I've ever had the misfortune to use, but the miter saw is a beauty. For $100 the thing looks and feels like a DeWalt, and is one of the more heavily used pieces of equipment in my shop.

Seems like after they bought DeWalt, the Black and Decker quality went up- might happen again after they buy out Delta, but who knows? At any rate, I don't like all this mega-consolidation, so I'm planning to purchase from Grizzly in the future- at least until Black and Decker buys them, too! :(

[Chris C]

What I meant was, they had that generic unisaw look to it just like the Jet and other knock offs. Having just restored a 42 unisaw, I can tell the difference between the real McCoy and one of the copies. The one I looked at was a left tilt, which if you have compaired prices on the internals, the left tilt parts are oddly a lot less than the right tilt parts. One would have to assume that when Delta decided to jump on the left tilt bandwagon, they just went to taiwan and knocked on the door of one of the factories pumping out unisaw clones. On a strictly business level, you could pay some good old Americans to make up the patterns and produce the left tilt castings and eat all of the tooling cost or you could just contact Grizzly's supplier who is already producing. Of course the quality probably won't be the same, but old joe wooddorker who is drooling over Norm's shiny new Uni probably won't know the difference.

I still find it funny that just about every "cabinet saw" is just a clone of of a saw that was first produced in 1939. It says a lot for the integrity of that design.

I am not all that optimistic about the B&D deal, but the Dewalt tools I have have held up well so maybe... could it get much worse???

Chris C.