Happy Laguna customer (and gloat)

[Matt Winterowd]

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

[Bruce Page]

Congrats Matt. That's a very nice saw.

[Paul McGaha]

Congratulations Matt,

Your new saw is a beauty.

[Mike Tekin]

Thanks for the pics and the info...I'm going to be ordering mine in the next couple weeks! I have had great dealings with Laguna sales staff as well so far.

[Matt Winterowd]

Thanks guys!

One more thought for folks in the market: This is the 4th bandsaw I've owned. I've had 2 other 14" saws, a PWBS-14CS, which I was always a little frustrated and disappointed with, and an ancient (1935) Delta, which was actually a pretty nice little saw, but very difficult to get any kind of dust control with and fiddling with the wheel covers and the guides was always kind of annoying. My 3rd saw is a 1940s vintage Walker-Turner 16" monster that weighs like 600lbs and you couldn't pry out of my cold dead hands, but I really prefer to leave a 3/4" resaw blade on it and not touch it.

When I decided to replace the Delta, I was really going back and forth between getting the Rikon 10-325 and trying to squeeze the Grizzly 513X2B into my tiny shop. I was leaning towards the Rikon since I was really looking for primarily a curve cutting saw, and the price and size are right. I have never been quite able to see how the Laguna 14" saws could be worth basically double the money of other 14" saws. After playing with this one at WC and seeing how nice it is, and realizing that I was essentially willing to spend this much on the Griz (with shipping and taxes), I decided to just pull the trigger. There is now no question in my mind that it is worth the money.

[Dave Lehnert]

Maybe now that they are selling through Woodcraft and Rockler will resolve the Customer Service issues I been reading about.

[Mike Tekin]

Its interesting how so many people had posted their bad experiences with customer service and Laguna - I had already found and PM'd six people between this forum and several others who had purchased Laguna band saws over the last 1.5 years and not one person had a negative experience - it was the opposite, thus its always good to take everything into consideration and not look at just the only negative experiences.

I never will assume until I look into it myself but the negative reviews do help to play devil's advocate.

I just decided to get one of these 3000 series bandsaws because the build quality and specs fit my needs.

[glenn bradley]

I love hearing happy stories. Congrats on the saw.

[michael case]

+ 1 Dave -- If Woodcraft backs them like they do everything else - then its a whole new ball game. PS. if Laguna has finally decided to mend their ways, never doubt the power of the web had a lot to do with it.

[Dave Lehnert]

Its interesting how so many people had posted their bad experiences with customer service and Laguna - I had already found and PM'd six people between this forum and several others who had purchased Laguna band saws over the last 1.5 years and not one person had a negative experience - it was the opposite, thus its always good to take everything into consideration and not look at just the only negative experiences.

I never will assume until I look into it myself but the negative reviews do help to play devil's advocate.



I just decided to get one of these 3000 series bandsaws because the build quality and specs fit my needs.

One always had to research and decide what is right for them. I am just going from my point of view after reading about their saws. Again, From my view. They were always credited with have one of the best saws money could buy. Not many complaints about that. Just there CS skills were lacking.
I even had a Woodworking tool dealer who DID NOT sell their saws tell me "They were the best"

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Congrats on the new bandsaw! May it serve you well.