Menu
What's new

Problem: Woodpeckers SS Woodworking Square

Bill Satko

Bill Satko

Member
Messages
3,223
Location
Methow Valley
I have a few Woodpecker tools: router table and lift, T-square and a large aluminum square. Almost all of these were bought some time ago when the pricing was not so egregious. Because I do so much hand work I have wanted one of their stainless steel square with the nice scribing notches. Over the years they have had several sales but I always had a hard time pulling the trigger on the purchase. Despite a sale price, their shipping was always expensive, even if you have them ship it by USPS.

Anyway recently I was weak and finally purchased one. It arrived yesterday and using it today I noticed something strange. A measurement seems incorrect. I took a closer look and found out the etching on the blade did not match on both sides. One side, verified by my one of my Starrett rules, was correct but the other was off by 1/32. Now 1/32 is not much, but is way too much for what I paid for it.

I know they will stand behind their product, but most likely I will have to ship it back for them to verify and then ship me another. Just a bother for spending what I consider a lot of money for something. I better go retrieve the packaging from the recycle.

1710624540838.png
 
I would expect better at their asking price.

Long ago my father told me to not switch tapes in the middle of a job. I didn't understand that until I was building a shed and misplaced my Stanley tape measure and started using a Craftsman tape. One of them was wrong.... Like you said Bill, a 32nd wouldn't make much of a difference in the rough framing for a shed but I suppose the cumulative error could put things out of square.
 
David Johnson said:
I have had that problem. Could not figure why items were too long, short. Used to have a tape measure at each work station. One was wrong. Now 1 tape for all the jobs. The extras are just to guestimate a board.
David
Click to expand...
I have more than one, BUT ... I always check a new tape against the old ones AND I make sure that the end clip moves the same (correct) amount on each tape so that inside and outside measures are correct and the same on all.
 
As I anticipated, I was contacted first thing Monday morning by Woodpeckers via email. They asked for some pictures showing what my problem was, which I sent. They promptly replied again and basically said, "yeah I see what you mean". They are sending me another and a prepaid label for me to send the defective square back to them. I was happy with their response.

I think I allowed myself to believe that Woodpecker's products were so superior that they did not require any verification of their expressed precision. In other words, I bought into the hype of their advertisement and the fact that they are a USA manufactured item. Again another hype that USA produced is always better. I did a little looking around for consumer reviews of their items. I was no longer surprised to see they had some negative reviews. I do believe they may have fewer of these than say iGaging which is made in China, but it is hard to say as I believe most of their products are bought directly from their website. That is where you are going to get any sale price. What I guess you can only say for certain is that their customer service is way superior than dealing with others like iGaging. I read some problems with iGaging with that regard.

As a consumer it is getting difficult to decide where the value is in your purchasing. Spend more and buy USA without a necessarily confirmed increase in quality but maybe better service or buy cheaper produced elsewhere with possibly as good quality that most likely is hit and miss and also may have customer service problems.
 
You didn't say it, but posts like these often make reference to China products being "junk". Nothing could be further from the truth. China makes what will sell at certain price points. To compete, many (most?) of their products are high quality. That is not a defense, China is so far from being our friend that they are enemies, politically and economically. I have a lot of Grizzly tools, some made in mainland China and some in Taiwan. I have always been pleased with the quality. There are American made tools (saws, lathes, etc.) but, even though I am loyal to America I am forced to be loyal to my pocketbook also.
 
There was a time when products from Japan were junk. That went away after the corporations there instituted process quality control as taught by Dr. J.M. Juran who advocated statistical quality control. He was hired by a number of corporations to come to Japan and teach process quality control. After implementation of his process control methods Japan's products became some of the best in the world.

In the late 70's I took several courses under Dr. Juran at the Stat-A-Matrix institute which at the time was located at Rutgers. My boss wanted to implement those policies in our division and I was chosen to learn the methods and begin implementation at the five manufacturing plants in our division. It took me two years to develop all the necessary manuals and training methods for our manufacturing plants but once we did the change in quality was quite remarkable. My boss said that everything we did was paid for in just a couple of months after the quality controls were implemented. It was quite rewarding to see your work result in something tangible.

I then used those statistical assessment methods to audit facilities and processes, products, distribution and retail to assess the quality of products all the way to the consumer.

I cannot speak to what methods China may or may not be using but in my experience you get what you pay for with most manufacturers. In these modern times almost every product has specifications and go/no go limits to assure a level of quality demanded by the purchaser. It is not a hit or miss product that customers buy over and over again.
 
Bill Satko said:
As a consumer it is getting difficult to decide where the value is in your purchasing.
Click to expand...
Like you, I lived through the era when the brand name meant a level of consumer confidence. This faith in a brand ran for years. Today, wherever anything is made we owe it to ourselves to be very educated consumers. I have a lot of different brands of tools in my shop for lot of different reasons. Each choice was made pretty specifically; quality, budget, availability, "I've just really always wanted one of those", and so on.

I have a couple of sets of steel rules that I use that happen to be from Lee Valley. I think two were replaced as out of spec but, now they all match and match my other chosen measuring and marking devices. Layout tools in my experience can take a miss or two to get a good "set" that meet the need. Once you get there . . . nirvana :D
 
Brent Dowell said:
I'm wondering how many they might have that will be off. I wonder how their manufacturing process works on those? Lasered? Just confused how they would get something off by that much when they have a reputation to uphold.
Click to expand...
Sounds like they need some good process control if they are manufacturing them here at home. If they are having them manufactured they either need better specifications for their manufacturer or better inspection methods for their receiving department. If a firm has specifications to which a manufacturer has agreed and then an incoming inspection program that is statistically based finds a problem it is time to reject that lot of product. Not many manufacturers want to see their products rejected.

By the way, one of the funniest things I remember from my statistical process control classes was this...

"If your boss doesn't understand statistics he will not trust you. If he doesn't understand statistics you will need to use charts and graphs. If he doesn't understand charts and graphs you will need to use stick figures. If he doesn't understand stick figures you need to find somewhere else to work."

You can lead your boss to data but you can't make him think.
 
For manual measuring tools I’m pretty much with PEC for decent value vs quality (mostly from India I believe). There is also at least one czech manufacturer who's name is escaping me at the moment. The PEC stuff doesn't have the refined feel of old vintage tools but it's good solid workable and SO FAR I haven't had significant (i.e. measurable by me) errors in them.

Some of the US made Starrett is still ok but boy howdy the premium you pay is extraordinary, and you have to be real careful that it’s not some of their overseas stuff as they've value propositioned a lot of that unfortunately (the rules and heads aren't hardened, the lettering/ruling quality is meh and not strictly accurate, etc..). Not all of their overseas stuff is bad of course but figuring out which is which is an exercise I'm not entirely willing to undertake on chance given the premium pricing on the brand. I do still haunt the usual places for vintage Starrett, Brown and Sharpe, etc... good deals IF you can find them (increasingly rarer it seems).

As for Woodpeckers, I do love to follow them as they are certainly one of the more successful marketing companies and I've learned a fair bit from that.
 
so how long is an inch...?
Inch, unit of British Imperial and United States Customary measure equal to 1/36 of a yard. The unit derives from the Old English ince, or ynce, which in turn came from the Latin unit uncia, which was “one-twelfth” of a Roman foot, or pes. (The Latin word uncia was the source of the name of another English unit, the ounce.) The old English ynce was defined by King David I of Scotland about 1150 as the breadth of a man’s thumb at the base of the nail. To help maintain consistency of the unit, the measure was usually achieved by adding the thumb breadth of three men—one small, one medium, and one large—and then dividing the figure by three. During the reign of King Edward II, in the early 14th century, the inch was defined as “three grains of barley, dry and round, placed end to end lengthwise.” At various times the inch has also been defined as the combined lengths of 12 poppyseeds.
 
Don Baer said:
so how long is an inch...?
Inch, unit of British Imperial and United States Customary measure equal to 1/36 of a yard. The unit derives from the Old English ince, or ynce, which in turn came from the Latin unit uncia, which was “one-twelfth” of a Roman foot, or pes. (The Latin word uncia was the source of the name of another English unit, the ounce.) The old English ynce was defined by King David I of Scotland about 1150 as the breadth of a man’s thumb at the base of the nail. To help maintain consistency of the unit, the measure was usually achieved by adding the thumb breadth of three men—one small, one medium, and one large—and then dividing the figure by three. During the reign of King Edward II, in the early 14th century, the inch was defined as “three grains of barley, dry and round, placed end to end lengthwise.” At various times the inch has also been defined as the combined lengths of 12 poppyseeds.
Click to expand...
I'm waiting for my Starrett rule marked in barleycorns and poppyseeds.
 
Brent Dowell said:
I'm wondering how many they might have that will be off. I wonder how their manufacturing process works on those? Lasered? Just confused how they would get something off by that much when they have a reputation to uphold.
Click to expand...
I wondered the same thing. Was it a one off or a batch problem? Human error or a robotic error? Not knowing their production process, we will never know. What I do know, there was a failure in two areas: the actual manufacture process and the quality inspections process.

I was just happy to get a quick response with no haggling over "is it really a problem". I once bought winding sticks from LV that were not flat. One of them was bowed quite a bit. In email correspondence I was told they were not manufactured to be a "straight edge" and therefore not out of spec. I don't think the women I was dealing with understood the impact of the error I was reporting on the function of a winding stick. I just sent them back for a refund as I didn't trust I would get sent a useable one. That made me pull the trigger on the more expensive but coveted winding sticks that I now own and are very happy with.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top