Matt Winterowd
03-07-2011, 11:42 AM
I got my new Laguna LT14 SUV yesterday (purchased at Woodcraft for 10% off - $1345) and man, what a great machine!
Getting it off the pallet was a bit of a challenge since I had no way to lift it and the pallet had obviously been kludged together in such a way as to prevent the mounting bolts from being removed. I had to have my wife tip the machine while I cut off the bolts with a grinder. Once past that hurdle, assembly was a breeze.
It doesn't come with a blade, and my WC only had a small handful of 125" blades, all Laguna brand. I picked up a 1/4" 6tpi blade to play with until I can get some more ordered. I put the blade on the machine and tensioned it by feel (more on that below). With no adjustment, it tracked dead center. I proceeded to rip a piece of 3/4 maple against the fence and was astonished to see that there was no perceptible drift. Intrigued, I proceeded to resaw a 6" wide scrap of maple. Again, with no adjustments, and completely the wrong blade for the job, I resawed a perfectly consistent 1/16" vaneer off the outside of the stock. Even the surface quality was remarkable. You can see a few ripples in in the far half of the board which is where I bobbled it a little switching from pushing to pulling it through the cut.
185540
The only blemish out of the gate was that the blade tension gauge pointer had come loose during transport. I sent a request to Laguna support last night at about 7:00 and received a phone call this morning at 8:00 AM with simple instructions how to fix it. The tech was very pleasant and checked to make sure that everything else was working well, and even had some suggestions about how he likes to check guide alignment and so on.
All together, so far I'm very impressed!
185541
Getting it off the pallet was a bit of a challenge since I had no way to lift it and the pallet had obviously been kludged together in such a way as to prevent the mounting bolts from being removed. I had to have my wife tip the machine while I cut off the bolts with a grinder. Once past that hurdle, assembly was a breeze.
It doesn't come with a blade, and my WC only had a small handful of 125" blades, all Laguna brand. I picked up a 1/4" 6tpi blade to play with until I can get some more ordered. I put the blade on the machine and tensioned it by feel (more on that below). With no adjustment, it tracked dead center. I proceeded to rip a piece of 3/4 maple against the fence and was astonished to see that there was no perceptible drift. Intrigued, I proceeded to resaw a 6" wide scrap of maple. Again, with no adjustments, and completely the wrong blade for the job, I resawed a perfectly consistent 1/16" vaneer off the outside of the stock. Even the surface quality was remarkable. You can see a few ripples in in the far half of the board which is where I bobbled it a little switching from pushing to pulling it through the cut.
185540
The only blemish out of the gate was that the blade tension gauge pointer had come loose during transport. I sent a request to Laguna support last night at about 7:00 and received a phone call this morning at 8:00 AM with simple instructions how to fix it. The tech was very pleasant and checked to make sure that everything else was working well, and even had some suggestions about how he likes to check guide alignment and so on.
All together, so far I'm very impressed!
185541