What is your most disliked or disappointing tool?

petebucy4638

Pete
Corporate Member
Jet 22-44 drum sander....the most aggravating tool Ive ever used.
Sorry to hear that you had problems with your drum sander. I bought a Super Max drum sander, and it has turned out to be one of my favorite tools. It does a great job of finishing snipe-free oak strip veneer. It's a bit slower than a planer but the finished product is worth the wait.
 

chris_goris

Chris
Senior User
Sorry to hear that you had problems with your drum sander. I bought a Super Max drum sander, and it has turned out to be one of my favorite tools. It does a great job of finishing snipe-free oak strip veneer. It's a bit slower than a planer but the finished product is worth the wait.
No worries replaced it with this, life is so much simpler now!
 

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Dee2

Board of Directors, Vice President
Gene
Staff member
Corporate Member
Bauer (sp., okay, HF) crown stapler. Every magazine refill meant I had to use the stapler as a hammer for 6-8 cycles to get the staples to feed.
 

Bill_L

Bill
Corporate Member
Grizzly G0803Z bandsaw. My son actually purchased this and the Grizzly benchtop lathe so he could try his hand at turning chess pieces. I'm disappointed in the bandsaw quality. I understand that it is an inexpensive bandsaw (get what you pay for) but it is really cheap. Any piece you put through the bandsaw catches on the plastic inset that surrounds the blade. The fence isn't much better. You can't really see how far away the fence is from the blade even though there are markings on the table. It's difficult to move and lock in place. You need a small screwdriver to tighten the fence in place each time you're cutting something. It's been frustrating trying to work with it...
 

BKHam

Bradley
User
Jet 22-44 drum sander....the most aggravating tool Ive ever used.

I've owned 3 jet / supermax sanders over the last few years and putting sandpaper on the drum might be the most annoying thing i do. also, the propensity to have the sand paper shift and then over lap and then get a burn mark and then its basically ruined (though i now dedicate a cheap chisel to scraping that burnt resin off).

2nd place aggravating - nearly all miter gauges i've used. i had the incra telescoping one which wouldn't hold a setting. i got the kreg which was off out of the box but has no adjustment (shimmed with feeler gauges to perform acceptably) . the delta one is sloppy.
 

BKHam

Bradley
User
Porter Cable biscuit joiner - I could not make boards line up with biscuits for the life of me. Maybe it was a me problem, but I doubt it. The Domino works much better (as I would expect from a tool thats 6x the price)

yea the fence on the old PC biscuit joiner was crap
 

JimD

Jim
Senior User
My HF stapler doesn't feed well when I forget to give it a couple drops of oil. When oiled it feeds very well.

I used to have a Craftsman router with a split motor shaft as the 1/4 inch collet. It had a pretty powerful motor but the bit would just slip and ruin the project if you tried to take more than a tiny cut. Last time I used it I was making a slot in a wood separator in my driveway to hide a wire in. I knew I would touch concrete at some point and I thought that router was the perfect tool for that job. Terrible design.
 

Henry W

Henry
Corporate Member
I used to have a Craftsman router with a split motor shaft as the 1/4 inch collet. It had a pretty powerful motor but the bit would just slip and ruin the project if you tried to take more than a tiny cut. Last time I used it I was making a slot in a wood separator in my driveway to hide a wire in. I knew I would touch concrete at some point and I thought that router was the perfect tool for that job. Terrible design.

'Thanks' JimD I have been trying to repress my memory on this ...

Have trashed my first router, a not-so-beloved Craftsman, for that reason - under prolonged use the collet loosened and project piece was ruined.
First time I thought it was my fault - for not tightening the collet down properly.
Second time.... I bought a PC690. Capacity for 1/2" bits on the PC was helpful too!
 

FredP

Fred
Corporate Member
'Thanks' JimD I have been trying to repress my memory on this ...

Have trashed my first router, a not-so-beloved Craftsman, for that reason - under prolonged use the collet loosened and project piece was ruined.
First time I thought it was my fault - for not tightening the collet down properly.
Second time.... I bought a PC690. Capacity for 1/2" bits on the PC was helpful too!
You were lucky the project was all that was ruined. I had 1 do that when edge routing. Spinny carbide things bouncing around the shop really get the juices flowing..... that router went missing immediately. ;)
 

Henry W

Henry
Corporate Member
You were lucky the project was all that was ruined. I had 1 do that when edge routing. Spinny carbide things bouncing around the shop really get the juices flowing..... that router went missing immediately. ;)
Yes Fred, I guess I was routing a groove, and upon examination it was deeper on end than the other - so a 'buried bit' configuration.
 

tvrgeek

Scott
Corporate Member
'Thanks' JimD I have been trying to repress my memory on this ...

Have trashed my first router, a not-so-beloved Craftsman, for that reason - under prolonged use the collet loosened and project piece was ruined.
First time I thought it was my fault - for not tightening the collet down properly.
Second time.... I bought a PC690. Capacity for 1/2" bits on the PC was helpful too!
Curious. I have had one for probably 40 years with no problems. I don't spin big bits in it, but love the spindle lock/power switch feature. It has been handy enough I have not dumped it even though I have a bigger Ridgid and Tridon. ( Drooling over the 18V Makita)
 

Henry W

Henry
Corporate Member
Curious. I have had one for probably 40 years with no problems. I don't spin big bits in it, but love the spindle lock/power switch feature. It has been handy enough I have not dumped it even though I have a bigger Ridgid and Tridon. ( Drooling over the 18V Makita)
Obviously there are a number of Craftsman routers and models. Mine was definitely on the cheap end of the cost curve, and was purchased in Canada, if that makes any difference. In this case I was running a single flute carbide 1/4" bit, 1/4"shank, to create a groove. It heated up quite a bit over a few pieces and than eventually the collet/bit started to loosen.
 

RoyWarren

New User
Roy
Mine is any of the retractable steel tapes.
That little gizzy on the end invariably catches in any crack or crevice it comes in contact with. It's six or eight feet away so I have to walk over and remove it, with some difficulty. Also, when you're measuring something and don't have someone to hold the other end, the tape will flop down and you have to start all over again. Always gets me riled up.

Roy
 

JimD

Jim
Senior User
I described the collet because there are many different routers (or used to be) branded Craftsman. For awhile they offered one that was a copy of a highly regarded bosch except it was red. It had 1/4 and 1/2 regular collets. Split collets that are made from the motor shaft are just bad ideas - a problem waiting to happen (IMHO).

I also shifted to PC690s. First one fixed base and the another one with 4 bases. The speed control went out on one of them but they both still work (single speed). I have the big PC in my router table and a Bosch Colt too (the Colt chuck is not terrible but it slips sometimes too). I don't think that one is so much the design as it is the basic limitation of 1/4 chucks. Not enough area even with a reasonably well designed collet. But I've never had my PC 1/4 inch collets slip. I do not use them a lot but I have to use one on my half blind dovetail jig.
 

bob vaughan

Bob Vaughan
Senior User
My most disappointing tool with a plug on it was the Auto Mach carving tool. I found that a mallet and a carving chisel worked faster and easier on my hands. That little vibrator buzzed and I still had to push pretty hard no matter what. Getting out the tool, wrenches, and various tips was way slower than reaching for a carving tool that's ready to go. The dinky little chisels were an annoyance to sharpen.

Maybe it would work well on balsa. basswood or paulonia when carving smaller scale detail but that's not me.

I sold it on Craigslist for cheap.
 

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wbarnes

Will
Corporate Member
Right when I started getting into woodworking I picked up a used Ryobi BT3000 on Craigslist for about $100. I thought I had gotten a fantastic deal at the time… realized about 15 minutes after first trying to use it that I had made a very poor decision so I sold it as quick as I could.

Lesson learned: do more research.
 

bob vaughan

Bob Vaughan
Senior User
A BT3000 came to me in a package deal of some machinery. Gave it away. Whoever started saying that was a good machine, I concluded, just hadn't had exposure to an actual good machine.
 

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