Opinions on Wilton machinery?

I have their 14" wood/metal bandsaw. Overall I have been happy with it cutting wood and aluminum. The manual speed control is a little cumbersome to use, but it does the job. The motor belt tension is set by the weight of the motor hanging down and I found this wasn't sufficient. I added a 40 lb brick of lead and that fixed the problem. The rip fence option works suprisingly well and I would recommend getting it if you don't have another way of ripping. Their design as far as dust control goes, though, is a joke. I had to make many mods and do a lot of sealing and it still isn't as clean as my 25 year old craftsman that I replaced. Now that I read what I just wrote, I guess I'm pretty tolerant of imported tool quality since I usually can't afford better. I consider them an assembled kit of parts with a pretty good starting point toward becoming a useful tool.

I have their 14" wood-metal bandsaw, only use it on metal. I'm happy with it. A professional shop would be better served by a Do-All (more money, more floor space, more performance) but the Wilton does everything I want to do and it is worlds better than having no bandsaw at all. Good blades are important. The blades that came with it were crap but I had some blades made locally of Sandvik bladestock that work very well.

Wilton used to be a very reputable US manufacturer. Then they "sold out" their name and now it's just another brand of tools made in Cheapistan. Further, they didn't use to make things like table saws and shop vacs or kitchen slicing gadgets or whatever foolishness they are up to now. They mostly made machinist vises and grinding air spindles and a few other things, maybe a vertical bandsaw. So you need to say whether you're talking about old Wilton or Homo Depot Wilton. I'm guessing you can infer from my tone which I'd recommend ..

GWE

I have one of their little cut-off saws which seems to have been made by a Swiss company and imported by Wilton. Its worked well in light duty for me and Wilton was good about replacing the belt guard which was damaged in shipping.

Mike

Wilton and Jet are both part of WMH toolgroup.

I don't know if the 14" wood/metal vertical bandsaw is "Old Wilton" or "New Wilton", can only say that I'm happy with it. YMMV. It is way far better than a similarly-sized Craftsman saw I had occasion to use in the early '80s. The construction is quite rigid. I have not had to touch the tracking since I first set it up, even though different blades run with different amounts of tension.

I too have the 14" wood/metal bandsaw and have been happy with it for the money I spent. Lane

I bought their 6x48 belt / 12" disc sander. There were several problems with it, screws stripped, totally unadjusted, and there was a major problem requiring it to be disassembled (don't remember exactly what is was, one of the shafts). I informed Wilton of the problem. I returned that one and picked up another one. I asked that it be checked to be ok. Turns out that one had stripped screws, was unadjusted, and apparently been dropped before I picked it up. The table was bent. I ended up returning it.

Wayne D.

I too have one of the backgeared 14" wood/metal Wilton vertical bandsaws. I'm also generally satisfied with it, for what it cost. It's doing what I bought it to do.

It's hardly fair to brand it as a "ready to rebuild" import (though it is made overseas), it's far better built than the average low-end import machines. The HF and similar saws aren't nearly as nice (or as expensive), and they don't offer a backgeared version anyway.

Actually, it's a near part for part copy of our *VERY* similar Delta machine. I've had the Wilton at home for about two years, and the Delta at work for about 30 years ... so far, what one can say about one, can be said for the other.

And yes, the Winton's dust collection is lousy, but the Delta has NONE at all.

Dan Mitchell ============

The only improvement I made to my saw was to lose that triangular plastic blade-tensioning knob and replace it with a larger aluminum knob with a little "spinner" handle on it. It makes blade changes a lot faster because I can wind up the slack and some of the tension using the spinner.