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Comment by mauvehaus | Hacker News Reader

That's a nice fuckin' miter saw[1] for $300! At that price you practically stole it, and you pretty much gave it away while making a $200 profit. The list price for a new one is $16,700. And no, that is not a typo [2]. If you ever have another one you'd like to sell at that price, please contact me :-)

For those not in the know, Northfield makes only industrial tools. There's a reason you don't see their stuff at your local home improvement store. Or your local Woodcraft/Rockler.

Tannewitz, incidentally also still exits and is still making the GHE.

Sadly Oliver, once one of the greats, is now another badge stuck on the same castings coming out of the same foundries as Powermatic, Grizzly, and everybody else.

[1] Actually, it might be the nicest miter saw mere money can buy.

[2] http://www.northfieldwoodworking.com/pricelist/pricelist.htm

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It was fantastic! In every way superior to the modern plastic/aluminum variants.

American Sawmill Co was the original Unipoint designer. Their models in the 1950s were the holy grail... a single phase, 110v saw that two guys could carry around, but was made of all cast parts so still had the accuracy of the modern Northfield variants.

Northfield bought the company in the late 1950s iirc.

http://vintagemachinery.org/pubs/detail.aspx?id=700

Small single phase ones no longer exist, you can only get the big ones. They are still ubiquitous in roof framing shops. No one has come up with a better design than the unipoint in the last 7-8 decades.

Well, I had been thinking about an original round-top DeWalt RAS for when I have shop space of my own, but now I have something else to trawl craigslist for. What a nice machine; thank you for sharing the history.

When I saw it on Craigslist I immediately drove out of state to get it. I can tell you that most of these rare birds gravitate to the owmm.org (old woodworking machinery) forum. They even have a surrogate system in place where they help each other buy machines local to another user and then settle up at scheduled meetups.

A guy on there bought mine when I eventually sold it.

I replaced a Delta RAS with it, that I never got aligned properly.

The problem with long arm RASs is they tend to have inaccuracy along the arm itself. The bigger it is the less likely that is, but throwing mass at it is a poor solution. Having a shorter movement footprint is without question the better design. All of the bearings that guide the movement of a unipoint are within inches of each other and fixed in space. The bearings on a long arm RAS have all of that movement distance to get out of alignment.

Good luck! There are a few floating around out there.

That is super informative. Thank you.

I mostly lurk on owwm, but I've found it to be a very knowledgable and supportive community when I've had questions.

my sale ad if you wanna try to talk the guy who has it out of it...

http://www.owwm.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=177973

"I have a 10" Forrest chopmaster but unfortunately I made the mistake of starting a cut on a steel plate without checking which blade was in the saw"

:-D

Did something similar with a hollow chisel mortiser. The head was hitting the fence, so I didn't set the depth stop. Which was fine, until I moved the table to cut another mortise in a location where the head didn't hit the fence. Turns out you can't cut square holes in cast iron with a hollow chisel and auger bit :-/

At least not unless you can pull really hard!

This guy https://www.facebook.com/warnermachinery/ reconditions and sells used industrial wood- and metal-working machines. Fascinating to see some of the tools he's restored.

I've stumbled on that guy and other similar people in many google searches. I think there's a privileged spot reserved in the afterlife for those guys.

There are a lot of old machine designs that weren't commercially successful, but are absolutely still relevant and useful. See my other comment about Powermatic 2A tenoners. If I had my pick of a shop wherever I lived, I would always have no less than two of those machines, even though Powermatic stopped making them years ago.

For another example, check out blogs and videos of window and door making machines from the late 1800s. Anyone who has ever built a wooden window can explain precisely why they are the most complex things in any building with wooden parts. Those machines from over 120 years ago were far superior to anything purpose built for window making today.

He's on instagram too. If you're on and into that sort of thing, he's worth a follow:

https://www.instagram.com/warnermachinery/

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