Lew Hodgett responods:


IMHO, Emerson has totally destroyed Ridgid, but then again, I'm prejudiced.

I was at Ridgid in Elyria, Oh the day is was announced that Emerson had
purchased the company. It was not a happy place.

Yes, but Emerson hasn't had anything to do with Ridgid for some time now. HD
pushed them out and brought TTI in, expanded the line of tools and got
redesigns on many of the remainder. The TS3650 table saw is a case in point.
Similar to the Emerson TS2424, but with some extra features and refinements
that add to utility. There is now a line of cordless power tools, and the job
site table saw, whose number escapes me at this hour of the morning, is
currently the best on the market.

Whether or not Emerson would have made similar changes I don't know, but I'd
guess they would have. It often isn't the producing company that creates the
quality range, the features gained or lost, the durability, but it is the
company doing the specifications--with the major spec being the profit margin.
Set a price for the final product and then decide what your profit margin is
going to be. Design to fit and to hell with the customer. Not a good process.

Look at the new Craftsman table saw (2124) to see what happens when a company
gets away from that process. It costs more than the saw it replaces, though
sales have kept the prices fairly similar since it was introduced. But that new
saw may well be the best non-industrial table saw that Sears has ever sold. Is
it the best table saw in the world? Of course not. It is a third addition to
the hybrid saw tradition, and seems to me to be better than the other two,
though by how much I don't know...and I could be wrong. I've done very, very
little with the DeWalt and Jet.

One thing with the new Craftsman saw line: it was designed and implemented for
Craftsman by a bunch of old Delta hands. Let's replace 'old' with 'former'. And
it shows the signs.

Charlie Self
"A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers." H. L. Mencken