Power Tool Hunting

I know this is a little later than I wanted it, but I've been working on all of the information from E3, but better late than never.

HAPPY FATHER's DAY!!!!!  This goes out to all of the fathers out there.

Over this last Father's Day weekend, my wife decided to go out and buy me a miter saw for me to play with.  (insert Tim Allen grunt)  Well when she went out Saturday morning with our one son, who was celebrating his own 2nd birthday that day, they decided to go to Harbor Freight Tools and buy a miter saw that we had already looked at prior to this.  She purchased the Chicago Electric 12in. Double-Bevel Sliding Miter Saw for $189, but got a discount since she purchased it as an open-box item.  And if you know my wife, when she wants a sale, she is always able to find something on sale, and in this case she got an even bigger discount, because when she opened the box, it seemed that the saw was previously used, but also never cleaned after its usage.

This is when everything started to go horribly wrong when it was brought home and we installed the saw blade that we had to purchase.  When we tried to run saw on our table that we set aside for it in the garage, it shook the entire table and the saw together.  So we took the saw off the table thinking that maybe the table itself was not sturdy enough and we placed it on the floor.  At this point we were going to saw a random piece of wood that I had laying around in the garage, and at this point when I turned it on, not only did it shake, but the entire side panel covering the blade blew off the saw and the plastic guard was basically sawed to ribbons, throwing plastic shards everywhere.  Luckily the blade itself didn't pop off because my right leg had been sitting right there and if it popped off, my leg would have as well.

So at this point we called everywhere dealing with Harbor Freight and Chicago Electric to get our money back since it was within 24 hours.  Harbor Freight allowed us to return the saw since nothing was ever really done with it before it shattered in front of us, but on their part, they never really asked us why we were returning it, or even opened the box to make sure everything had been returned.

So we decided that maybe it might not be a good thing to try and save money when you are buying such a large power tool, so we gave in and went to Lowe's and purchased a Dewalt 10-in Single Bevel Miter Saw, that of course we were able to purchase on sale and get a discount because we purchased the floor display.

So the key thing to take away from this in the future, is sometimes its better not to buy the cheapest thing possible, because you might actually be taking your life into your own hands.