Tool price inflation – temporary or permanent?

[D_W]

If I were to take my recent purchases of a vice and clamps or a welder from liddles,
or anything in a pound shop, the price seems unchanged.
Some cheap engineering tools to be had also.

Is Veritas tools gotten more expensive, just checked axi 2009 magazine
bevel setter was £24.20, now £29.18.

Had a bandsaw which was just over a grand, now equivalent is just over three.
It doesn't make sense to me.

That's a tough pill unless the first bandsaw price was 1985.

 

[Ttrees]

2009 axi catalog the axminster AP5300 bandsaw is £1,189.50,
I had a 20" Startrite 502 which was just under that, and the euro conversion rate was good at the time.
A similar sized far eastern laguna 18" machine is listed for 3150 euros today.
I don't have an argument, as I don't understand all that, just an observation.

If I have any argument it'll be in the tool recommendation list, as it often is new with a warranty with bells and whistles vs buying used quality machine situation
Both options can be a gamble in my experience.

Tom

 

[Ttrees]

I'll admit that that's not shopping around, and to be a bit fairer one might look at the Itech machines
which were a bit more expensive than the other two options at the time,

Take the Itech BS500 is listed for £2196 vat included (in all figures given)
so more like twice the price,
I don't have a number on what that would cost if delivered to Eire, but would think a few hundred, so twice the price I suppose.

 

[TRITON]

I think it's time we all paid extra attention to Matthias's bandsaw vids

 

[Henniep]

I bought IPA from Hexeal, about £17 for 5 litres. It went up to £28 during the first lockdown. It's back down to what it was before.

Probably because sales dropped as a result of the price hike. Very few retailers readjust prices downward.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

No, more likely because their material costs went up then came down again - they didn't hold the price up unnecessarily. Their sales would have boomed - it's an antiseptic/disinfectant.

 

[Spectric]

Price rises are one thing but quality seems to be going in the other direction just as fast, not just tools and machinery but anything you buy is often borderline shiete if you are lucky.

 

[artie]

Price rises are one thing but quality seems to be going in the other direction just as fast, not just tools and machinery but anything you buy is often borderline shiete if you are lucky.

Was quoted £25 + vat for a sheet of 11mm osb3 yesterday.

Doesn't seem long since it was £9

I checked up, in june this year it was £14.42 +

 

[D_W]

Price rises are one thing but quality seems to be going in the other direction just as fast, not just tools and machinery but anything you buy is often borderline shiete if you are lucky.

I think it depends on what you buy. The 18" bandsaw ranges that were about $1200 15 years ago weren't very good. The jet I had was supposed to be improved over the prior version (which was all stamped, and lightly built in spots despite being almost 400 pounds - just shortcuts in areas where there shouldn't have been). The tables were little and the fences on saws like that were all extruded aluminum and the tensioning systems matched the technology on sears saws that used bands the size of dental floss (just bigger springs and knobs).

Resaw height was also low (often 10" on bigger saws, and mine at 12.5" was high for the time).

However, my 18" saw that was "upgraded" from the prior version with cast parts in key places had a wheel that was almost (the casting and centering) .01" out of round, which caused the saw to knock the top guides loose and leave grooves in anything sawn about 5 thousandths deep plus regular error.

If the saws now are much worse than that, I'd be surprised. Jet was supposed to be one of the brands safer than the lower tier types. I didn't know about the out of roundness or why the saw didn't stay set for long until selling it and measuring it for the guy buying it. I had to take another $200 off when I saw that (I'd have literally put duct tape over the tire on the short side of the wheel had I noticed earlier.

The jobsite stuff may not be any better, but it's closer to the same cost (a decent site saw a dozen years ago here was about $500, and that's about the same now - I think I paid about $500 for a bosch 4100 in the early 2010s and they're $599 now. It's no prize (the original one that I have), but it cuts wood.

Basic saws having a large cast resaw fence (most had smaller tables when I got mine, too, or nonfunctional bits like short in depth tables but that went all the way to the inside post on grizzly saws) were non-existent (you had to spend another several hundred dollars to buy one of the aftermarket cast fence setups. What a pain!!

In 2006 when I jumped into this hobby, there was a lot more talk of how to get something to work better and less talk of sending back, though. The american blue forum had lots of reports of grizzly tools arriving with rust, which was rectified by the forum being "non-competitive for advertisers" and locking threads where more than one person complained about the issue.

 

[D_W]

Never mind, I'm wrong - the $599 price now includes the jobsite wheeled stand. It's the same price as it was when I bought it, which seemed high at the time (the fact that the price hasn't increased makes me still feel like it was overpriced then! The fence on it definitely works worse than one would expect if they're not used to site tools).

 

[Ttrees]

Does quality control make the cost go up that much though?
Noting that many manufacturers have dropped certain large bandsaws, (pre pandemic) it nearly seems so.
I wonder if the newer machines, selling at what I shoulda said, likely a comfortable 2 1/2 times as much regarding bandsaws anyways, which are still skimpy in areas on various machinery , will have any surprises in store?

I would have been perfectly happy with my far eastern 20" had it ran right, but if it were even twice the price, I might have looked at used from the get go.