Good old tools are excellent.
In every era, most of the market is crap.
If something is good, and not over-priced, it was probably a design accident.
You want old stories:
Every year I saw a ton of curb-wood into stove-wood. This is too big for the table saw, but awful small for a gas chainsaw.
I've gone through many of the WEN and WEN-clone electric chainsaws. They all suck. Underpowered, cheezemetal inserts in soft plastic, and they never cut straight.
I got a WALL. They were pioneers in chainsaws, their 2-man gas saw revolutionized big timber. They later made an electric, with a washing machine engine, bevel gearing, and sawchain which looked more like classic cross-cut teeth on a chain than the Oregon-patent sawchain seen everywhere today. What a beast. It ran perfectly after all these decades, had power, cut straight, but the cutting was lame even after some experiments with tooth angle and depth. Modern sawchain IS better. While it didn't cut any faster than a WEN, it was HEAVY enough to cut without help, so I rigged an arm. Set it on a large log, stand back, plug it in, watch it stroll through the log.
Then I got a late 1970s Craftsman lectric chainsaw. It is better than Sears ever intended. Clean and lube, new standard chain (the original "self-sharpening" chain was bogus and now illegal, but it is standard 72LP links), it walks through wood about as good as you can expect for a fist-size electric motor. Cuts pretty straight. Reasonable weight. E-Z to service. Takes a standard #10 bar, used on most small gas saws, so I've mounted 18" and even 20" bars... you can't let the saw dig-in to that much log, but you can feather it through to break-up large logs into stuff it can handle well. I went on eBay and bought all I could find. Sears even stocks a few key parts; I got a couple new cogs.
It is still a toy tool. It just happens to be a better toy than Sears probably intended. Their all-new for the 1980s replacement is another WEN-like cheese-toy.
And yet, I keep looking at the Makita UC4030A or Milwaukee 6215 chainsaws. These seems to be the only ones on the market which are not the old WEN in new clothes, which are true professional Power Tools instead of toys.
I have two very old circular saws. The one my FIL stole from somewhere is a very fine machine. The other is a genuine early SKILL, musta cost a bunch new, is such a lame pain that I threw it in the scrap-metal.
> inexpensive new jig saw from Ace
The buyers at ACE, like most major chains, are not wood-wizards. Their job is to sell, not saw. They can easily be swayed by a pretty box and a generous profit margin. Occasionally something good slips past them: I got a low-price cordless drill at ACE which can never replace my DeWalt, but handily does many-many small jobs and the battery holds its charge well after the DeWalt and Makita batt-packs crapped out fatally.
The Bosch jigsaw is an excellent machine, but I could not justify the price for what I am worth.
Topic: are old/vintage power tools better than new? (Read 14484 times)