I thought I'd post this here for comments. I'm still in communications with the vender and everything, but this is not a promising start.
I'm interested in doing a little moulding...mostly for my own home, but you never know where things might go. I looked into a woodmaster and talked to someone there before Christmas. I don't have the money to buy a unit, but was curious as to whether I could use my Jet planer to do moulding. The person assured me that they could cut blades for a Jet and it would work on my machine (I gave him my model number).
My wife got me a casing blade for Christmas and I just now have gotten around to trying it out. I took the blades out of the planer (and sent them to Daren for sharpening...thanks Daren), and tried to install the casing blade. Unfortunately, there is no way it will fit either with their own parts they sent with it or with the existing parts. I measured the thickness of the knife and it came in at 7/16th". The thickness of my blades are 1/8".
I sent an email in to woodmaster explaining this and hoping that they could do a return/exchange (my wife swears she specifically asked for a knife for the Jet planer.) After a couple days I get a reply back that said, "you need to call so-and-so in the knife department." I responded to him asking if he could forward my message to the person who needs to address this, because I do not have access to a phone during business hours (I pretty much do all my communications through email now-a-days because of this.)
I wait a couple more days and get a response saying that I can send the knife back to them (my expense) and they would verify whether it is the right knife or not (evidently they will be able to tell if it is the right knife even though they are 4 states away, while I am unable to do this standing right next to my machine.) If it is indeed the wrong knife then they will credit my account. If they determine it to be the right knife, then I "will have to let us knowwhat you would like to do with the knife at that point."
I am going to take pictures of the thickness of the knife in comparison to the thickness of my blade as well as a picture of it sitting in the knife trough to illustrate why it won't fit. I will also request that they credit my account the additional amount I needed to pay for shipping their product back to me.
I'm rather disappointed with this first contact with a company that I've heard a lot of good about. Perhaps I'm making a mountain out of a mole hill, but their slow responses along with the attitude that I must not know what I'm doing in installing the knife is more than a little disapointing.
I'll keep you posted if there are any developments on this. If anyone has run into anything simliar with this company, I'd be interested in how you handled it.
Quote from: Osric on March 13, 2008, 07:28:57 PM
I thought I'd post this here for comments. ...................... and I just now have gotten around to trying it out. ................. If anyone has run into anything simliar with this company, I'd be interested in how you handled it.
Osric
Have to admit I'd think they would be a might concerned what you did with the blades between Christmas and now....and you are saying
their responses are slow.....no offense, but maybe gladly paying the shipping back in hopes they will replace these with blades closer to 1/8" thickness. Their blade is near 1/2" thick if it is 7/16"
::) ::)
If my calculations are correct, it has only been 78 days since Christmas. That isn't an unreasonable time frame for someone to determine that an incorrect product has been shipped. Assuming that the planer is in its original configuration, it is obvious that someone at Woodmaster has made an error, and it is my opinion that the company should bend over backwards to ensure that the error is corrected promptly and with no additional expense to the customer. I would think that a letter to the company's CEO would bring a swift and fair settlement to the problem.
I never knew that woodmaster made knives for jet planers. The problem isn't with the thickness of the knives but with the size of the gib to lock it in with. Woodmaster knives are also 1/8" but the moulding knives are around 3/8". The gibs in the woodmaster have enough adjustment to accommodate this difference. They also send two counterweights with each knife. I don't know how the jet planer is set up, maybe there isn't enough adjustment. Let me know if I can help, the guy that makes those knives is a friend of mine.
Just a minor update...
I sent an email back to Woodmaster (contact is Russ). I'll post it in it's entirety.
QuoteBefore I send it back, I thought I'd send a few pictures to illustrate what I'm talking about and hopefully avoid confusion (and shipping costs) on both sides.
The first few pictures are the blade which was sent side by side with my normal Jet blade. These pictures are to illustrate the difference in width between the blades.
There is also a picture of the blade sent to me in the slot of the planer along with the gib sent to me to secure it into place. As should be evident, there is not enough room in the slot for both the blade and the gib in the slot, so it is impossible to secure it into the slot.
Finally, there is a picture of the blade along side the gib that Jet uses to secure the normal planer blade. As with what you sent me, there simply is not enough room in the slot for these things, so there is no way to secure the blade into the slot.
Now, if I'm doing something wrong here, and this can be corrected without me returning the product, I'm all for it. But for the life of me, I don't see how I can secure the blade in my planer when there isn't enough room in the planer for the blade and the gib. If an incorrect gib was sent to me and you can just send the correct one, that is great too. Otherwise, I don't see how this blade is supposed to work with my planer and I would need to return it.
Thank you for your time,
I attatched a few pictures to this email.
This was sent Tuesday morning. I haven't received so much as a "I received your email and am looking into it." Nothing at all.
To say I'm disappointed in their customer service at this point would be an understatement.
A final note:
I'm going to return this knife and hope for a refund. I never heard back from Russ, but I did eventually receive a message from Ed who faxed my wife a page on installing the blade. It didn't help because the blade and the gig, any way you measure them, are simply too wide to fit into the planer slot. In fact, following the directions would have required even more room in my planer slot. I give Ed credit for picking up a ball that Russ evidently didn't want, but even he never did anything after the fax. When I worked in sales, it was standard that if you had an unhappy customer, you made a callback after the "resolution" to see if he was satisfied. Still...props to Ed for trying. A big fat @#$$# to Russ for being one of the least helpful customer service reps I've come across in a long time.
This experience has completely turned me off to Woodmaster. They may make a great product....I have no idea. But I honestly feel that I would have gotten as good of customer service if I had bought some cheap Chinese crap. It certainly couldn't have been worse.