Disappointed with Fine Woodworking Product Review

[Steve Mathews]

In our woodturning club of over 50 members, 1 has a Vicmarc. That's 2%. They must be more popular in your region.

In my region you would be hard pressed to find 50 turners. I suspect most of your members and elsewhere use lathes made in Taiwan and China. More discriminating woodturners I believe have invested in machines made by Oneway, Robust and Vicmarc. This is not meant to be a criticism of the Jet, Powermatic, Rikon type machines. They serve as a price point for those that either can't afford or are unwilling to pay for something of better quality.

I reject most of the comments in defense of FWW. The author of the article, Andrew Finnigan had an opportunity and I believe a responsibility in this assignment to enlighten the readership of FWW of what's available in Midi lathes. I believe he fell far short in that by not even mentioning (he didn't have to review it) one of most prominent manufacturers of woodturning lathes that has had a long history in the craft. I don't know the author's reason for the omission. Perhaps the manufacturer didn't cave into the request for a free machine to review so the author didn't feel compelled to even mention it. Or as a "professional woodturner" as he professes to be he just wasn't aware of Vicmarc lathes. After all, according to his website he only does spindle work. As for the editors of FWW I think they have a responsibility to vet their guest authors more closely. This one I believe slipped by them.

[mike stenson]

So, you've already sent them an email voicing this. Cool.

[Larry Edgerton]

They have never reviewed most of the tools I own, don't care. Camaro, Mustang, but I own a Firebird!

[Josko Catipovic]

This looks like a freebie ad campaign for Vic-lathe.

[Steve Mathews]

So, you've already sent them an email voicing this. Cool.

Nope. Thanks to this forum I'm done venting. Complaining to AWW would only be in part doing the job they were supposed to do. I'll continue receiving my gift subscription but will look at any of their future reviews with a jaundiced eye.

[John Pendery]

I’ll keep an eye out for the Martin T77 in their next table saw shootout…

[Jared Sankovich]

I’ll keep an eye out for the Martin T77 in their next table saw shootout…

Or even something as pedestrian as a scmi.

[Richard Coers]

To support your disappointment, I recently canceled my subscription to FWW that I started with #8. That's like 300 magazines ago.

[Steve Mathews]

I’ll keep an eye out for the Martin T77 in their next table saw shootout…

Come on guys, you can't be this pedantic. A table saw in the same category as the best in the AAW lathe review is maybe $10k tops. Isn't the Martin T77 around $70k? Get real with your comparative arguments. Now I'm really done with this.

[Brian Tymchak]

Vicmarc equipment is available from at least Craft Supplies, Packard Woodworks and Woodturners Wonders. A quick visit to Vicmarc's website would reveal that. As far as the range of prices in the review Vicmarc lathes are at the upper end but less than the most expensive Robust offerings. I have Oneway (Canadian), Vicmarc (Australian) and Jet (Taiwan) lathes and find the omission of Vicmarc in the review to be a fatal flaw.

Well, just to defend myself a little bit: None of those vendors appear to offer the VicMarc model that I searched for. ...A quick visit to those vendors sites revealed that...

Now that I've seen the review, I agree the price point could not have been a constraint.

[John Pendery]

Come on guys, you can't be this pedantic. A table saw in the same category as the best in the AAW lathe review is maybe $10k tops. Isn't the Martin T77 around $70k? Get real with your comparative arguments. Now I'm really done with this.

I’m sorry I shouldn’t have posted that I was just trying to joke around

[Michael Burnside]

Come on guys, you can't be this pedantic. A table saw in the same category as the best in the AAW lathe review is maybe $10k tops. Isn't the Martin T77 around $70k? Get real with your comparative arguments. Now I'm really done with this.

Not sure why others are piling on. IMHO there was nothing wrong with you posting an opinion with reasonable justification.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

I always remember this is just one man's opinion. He's welcome to it. I'd bet that a majority of FWW's readership doesn't know Vicmark exists or can afford one. Maybe they are trying to make reviews that are appropriate for their readership?

[Derek Cohen]

Vicmarc is used by the top turner in the world, Richard Raffan. The range is impressively built, and expensive, even here in Oz. I would have loved to have purchased one when I was upgrading 5 years ago, but it was too much to justify. I purchased another superior lathe - also not in the "review", the Nova Saturn. These lathes are in a different - much higher - price range than the FWW article, which looked at <$1000 and >$2000 mark (but included a few around $2000 and then a $2800 and a $5700 model). This lack of continuity makes little sense.

Further, the lathes all appear to have fixed headstocks, which is becoming outdated.

This begs the question "who chooses the tools for comparison, and based on what criteria?".

Regards from Perth

Derek

[John Lanciani]

"Perhaps the manufacturer didn't cave into the request for a free machine to review so the author didn't feel compelled to even mention it."

Or maybe the author asked for a lathe to review and Vicmarc didn't feel the need to have their lathe included in the article. You don't think that they purchase one of everything that gets reviewed do you?