Laguna Tools - good tools, bad service

Howdy from Canada. I worked in your country about 20 years ago (in Hi-Tech). Unfortunately I never good to work with any of your lovely hardwoods. Here on the West coast of Canada there aren't many good hardwoods. It's mostly softwoods (Western Red Cedar, Douglas Fir). Western Big Leaf Maple is one decent hardwood, especially if you get it after it has spalted some.

Now to what motivated me to make this posting. Some of you will have heard of Laguna Tools in Irvine, California, USA. I have dealt with Laguna for about 5 years now. I got started with them when I went looking for a good resawing bandsaw blade. I was very impressed with Torben Helshoj's talk. The features Laguna has put on their table saws and bandsaws made it clear that these guys had tools that were ahead of most others (Delta, General etc).

Laguna Tools is not an easy company to deal with. Even for me, in Canada, it is bad because they insist on shipping by courier and I get hammered on brokerage at the border. Launa likes to track shipments. The US Post Office only charges $5 brokerage on a shipment and now tracks parcels but Laguna refuses to send things that way.

I have two Laguna saws, a TSS (table saw with slider) and an LT24 (24" bandsaw). My TSS is the early version of the saw and the LT24 is the older version with only 17" resaw.

For the most part these saws have been good. The TSS has had a few issues:

1) There is something about the elevation crank lock that causes the setting to change when the lock is tightened.

2) The trunions bind a bit when the saw is tilted off vertical.

3) The paint on the rip fence has not adhered well and there was quite a bit flaking off right from the outset.

4) Laguna manuals are poor compared with say those of Delta.

On the plus side the TSS has a good slider that makes the one I had on my Unisaw look like a piece of junk. The access to the blade is fantastic and saw is built like a tank.

My problems with Laguna probably really started when I bought their "Driftmaster" bandsaw fence. They happily took my money and then made me wait over 6 months to get it. I touched base with them frequently and was given the run-a-round time after time.

A couple of recent experiences have motivated me to write this post.

1. I bought some insert shaper cutters from Laguna. They were on sale and I expected they were cleaing them out. What arrived, however, was worse than that. These cutters were filthy dirty and many were stained badly even once the remains of the protective oil was removed. Quite a few were not sharp. I got in touch with Laguna and told them the above but they did not acknowledge that there was an issue and they did NOTHING to retify things.

2. Recently I bought Laguna's swing arm and large support table for my TSS. Their website says this is an add-on for the new TSS but that, if you have the old TSS, you have to drill mounting holes first.

The above arrived with some cosmetic damage but, more importantly, there was absolutely no documentation. No parts list, no diagrams, no assembly instructions. Absolutely nothing. The reason for this eventually became clear: this swing arm in not really meant for the TSS but rather their larger panel saw. It can be put on the TSS but normally guys at Laguna put it on their panel saw. I am likely the first person to put it on a TSS, an old TSS for sure.

I got in touch with Laguna. Their rsponse is never fast but after some agitation on my part I eventually appeared to be making progress. A guy in their Customer Service said he would e-mail me the required documents.

Three days later and nothing. I agitate again and, in the course of discussion, realize the problem is "there are no instructions, parts list etc". The guys who put it on the big saw do it by "auto pilot".

While the real deal here may not be atotal shocker, what really sucks is that Laguna has never acknowledged that they are misrepresenting this add-on on their website and have done nothing to make it a valid item. Nor are they prepared to make an effort to do so now.

I have given Laguna Tools the benefit of the doubt on more than one occasion but I have now reached my limit. Make what you may of this post, but if you deal with Laguna Tools and get similar treatment, don't say you weren't warned.