kmmcrafts

@Scrappile Well as I said, I strongly looked at getting a Hegner.. so I did research and did my homework to find the saw that I thought would best fit me.. I had already had the Excalibur and knew I didn't want a small table.. Hegners tables are sadly smaller than the EX's so that was a big turn off in my decision making.. that said, I know one could build / make a table top for it.. in my defense on that decision I guess my old stubborn head couldn't wrap around why I should have to do that when a Hawk already has that.. I'm in no way saying Hawk or Hegner is better than one or the other.. just stating the facts as I learned by my research. Both saws have been around for a lot of years.. Hegner made a really robust saw years ago and have done very few changes and upgrades to a well made design.. Hawk has made a lot of changes over the years from different blade clamps to making them have adjustable aggression of the blade etc.. they've tried to improve a good saw many times over the years.. Hegner is great but it also ( In My Opinion ) is outdated and could use some improvements for a more versatile saw that would appeal to a wider range of users.. as in some folks don't care about the smaller table.. or that it's bottom feed only.. no blade aggression adjustments etc. Not knocking the fact it doesn't have those features.. but for me those were important things.. others may not care.. I do like the Hegners smaller footprint and the stand seems like it would be more comfortable to sit behind.. I paid less money for the Hawk, and did so knowing that customer service and parts can be a pain to get.. That sucky customer service and parts sourcing isn't for everyone.. just as a Hawk isn't for everyone and a Hegner isn't for everyone either.. I've seen many complaints of users of both saws over the years.. I honestly chose Hawk for a couple main points.. and that was larger table and more updated features like the blade aggression adjustment.. and the fact that all the parts are machined so getting parts made if ever needed "could be" done.. At the end of the day.. Both are awesome well built saws and I'm sure either one would last a lifetime of scrolling with minimal parts needed.. I've said this many times... You can have the best built saw, but if it's not user friendly to your style cutting you'll never really love it.. and that is how I seen the Hegner ( for me ) I didn't see me liking the table, and some of the other things..

I suppose it depends on what vintage and model of Hawk.. Hawk made a lot of changes through the years.. If you're talking new Hawk vrs. new Hegner.. There are big differences.. Hawk has large table - Hegner doesn't Hawk comes standard with light mounting - optional for hegner at a additional price Hawk has adjustable blade aggression - don't think Hegner has that? Hawk doesn't need additional blade holders for various sized blades - Henger does and only comes with one, you get to pay extra if you need different balde holder sizes. Hawk has quick toolless blade holders - additional cost for Hegner Hawk can feed blade from top or bottom - Hegner bottom feed only Hawk made with real sealed bearings - Hegner made with bronze bushings Hawk has hold down mechanism for upper arm for easy top feeding - can't top feed from Hegner so no need Hawk parts including body of saw all machined high grade aluminum - Hegner uses a lot of cast aluminum or iron. Hawk SPM ( speed ) 125 -1750 - Hegner is 300 - 1700 Hawk has no dust collection fitting for Vacuum - Hegner does Hegner has adjustable length blade stroke - Hawk doesn't Hawk saws come with stand - Hegners do at additional cost. Hawk 20" saw $1200 - Hegner 18" saw without stand $1395 or $1575 with stand Hawks have a very strong powder coated finish on them - Hegners seem to have a cheap paint and most older saws look like they was dragged behind a car in the saltbelt in the winter.. seems every older Hegner has the paint half gone and rust Hawks largest saw is a 26" throat - Hegner is 22" saw. Hawk has had ( seems to be improving ) poor customer service and inventory of parts which can take a lot of time to get - Hegner has wonderful customer service and usually ahs parts on hand. I strongly looked at Hegner when I bought my new Hawk. Things that turned me off was the fact that parts are pricey and they come bare-bones no bells and whistles unless you pay extra for the needed / wanted things.. Hawk comes with most everything one would want / need on every standard saw. The small table was a big turnoff for me.. as is their seeming to want to Nickle and dime you to death for additional items that in my opinion should come with a saw and standard parts are very pricey.. I know there is nothing wrong with casted parts of the saw but I really like the fact that most every part on a Hawk is a machined part.. should Hawk go out of business and can't get parts.. a machine shop should be able to hook you up with what you need without too much trouble.. I chose Hawk for many reasons.. I have family and a neighbor that are machinist.. so I just felt if I needed something that Hawk can't get me.. I'll have it made.. I think if one is mechanical inclined many of the wear parts for either saw could be had at a hardware store rather than going through dealers. ( springs, bearings / bushings etc. ) I know I'm missing some things but I gotta get back out to work.. If I think of more I'll post it later..

Hard to beat the parts prices for Hawk parts.. I think one could rebuild the whole machine for less than $75.. I rebuilt a DeWalt several years ago and all the bearings and parts totaled $230.. Did the same with my Excalibur last year and I had nearly $300 in parts. I also feel the price of a new Hawk is quite reasonable considering the quality of saw they are.. being able to run one for several years before needing any of those low cost parts..

I think Bearwood.com is in Canada.. why not order from them? Niqua blades is rebranded Flying Dutchman blades so they are the same blade.. just different name..

Yes, used to do a lot of business with them. I think the couple that run it went through divorce and customer service was non-existent.. maybe they've got things running good again.. but I give a business 3 strikes just like a ball game.. and depending on how they handle situations maybe only one strike.. anyway they was always good to me until 3 different times they forgot to mail my order.. one time they mailed half of it and said the other half would be a couple weeks because they was on back order.. 6 months later when I ran out of blades I remembered I never got my other half.. they did make it right.. but I guess I honestly thought they'd do a little extra for royally messing that up.. mess ups was a common thing and I got tired of that so gave someone else my business. I think what happen is the wife would run the business during the day and the husband worked.. the divorce made the husband end up doing it all.. and orders were late etc.. at one time there was a lot of folks complaining about the slower service. Replies from them was that he works full time+ and then trying to run the business.. hopefully they have things figured out by now.. I just got tired of all the excuses etc.

If you have a way to mill your own.. it's a lot cheaper than buying the "store boards" I used to buy the store boards.. then I started buying the bundle packs ( bundles of 30 board foot or less ). Now I go out back and get the good deals of buying 100+ board foot at a time which gets you into a much lower price bracket..

The new BM series is basically a G4 with a better motor bearing block etc. so it's really a G4 with upgrades. They claim to have issues with the G4 motors bearings getting worn / hot and snapping the motors shaft so they upgraded the motor / bearing to resolve the issue.. Also machined the uprights from solid aluminum at the back of the BM series rather than having the casted uprights.. otherwise same saw I believe.

This is like the purchased one I had and worked well for me for several years.. But as dust and dirt go to it and just general wear it got to where it needed cleaned up.. Apparently it wasn't up to the quality for washing it as it was never the same after that.. ( may have been me.. I did the wash one other time when I first got married and now the wife wont let me do it.. ) and the cloth backdrops was easy to wrinkle.. I wasn't about to iron it every time I needed to use it. To do over I might have just used the poster board inside the tent as it worked great for defusing the light etc. My biggest issue was keeping the cloth clean and wrinkle free. Mine came with tripod and two tripod lights.. I have since pitched everything other than the lights and tripod and made my cardboard box one.. lol https://www.amazon.com/Neewer-Shooting-Diffusion-Backdrops-Photography/dp/B00GKG4JVE/ref=zg_bs_3444581_50?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=HB1NC61WG7QFYGK0E25Y

I'm sure one of the designers would make one if you put in a request..

Only ones I know of are desk clocks.. https://woodenteddybear.com/products/sm164-rooster-clock https://cherrytreetoys.com/rooster-clock-pattern/

Sometimes there has to be bad things happen to open the door for better things to come in.. While I do agree that it's a shame that Excalibur quality declined.. but I think it's more a shame that more people buy without asking or reading reviews. If Excalibur wouldn't have had the issues they had a few years ago.. I'm doubting that the Seyco, Jet, King, and Pegas saws wouldn't have evolved.. Now there are more and better options than the Excalibur, even better options than the better made Excalibur's with the larger table of the seyco.. the better built Pegas etc. etc.

I'd suggest buying a set of Pegas blade Chucks.. They helped me a lot. I was the same way when I first got my Excalibur.. I couldn't believe all the folks that loved these saws.. Then I learned I had bought the China made saw.. that saw is far from the quality of the original older Excalibur's.. SO if you cannot return it to where you got it at and get a Pegas saw or a King.. at least get those Pegas upgraded blade chucks. https://www.artcraftersonline.com/product-page/pegas-chuck-head-set-for-popular-saws

I rarely use Walnut.. mostly because I won't buy it.. Love the look and nice to work with but pricey. Sometimes a customer will request it so I try to make sure to have a couple boards around. it's kind of a hit and miss thing with getting lumber at this scale.. The sad thing is about this walnut or any pile of lumber like this that I get is.. Customers bring in their logs to my brother and pay him to cut it.. He sticker stacks it and then they never come to get it. He was paid 10 years ago for this walnut. Customer never come picked it up.. and then he looses contact with customer so this pile for instance.. There was 6 times this amount on the stack however the top 1/3 and the bottom 1/3 of the two big stacks was rotted so bad that you try to lift a board up and it just crumbles into pieces. The deal was I go through the stacks and clean up the rotted stuff by putting what is junk but solid enough to burn into a bin after I cut it into 4ft lengths so they can fit in his wood boiler. salvaged lumber goes to me.. the crumbled up mess I have to run the articulating loader tracker with the bucket to scoop it up and dispose of it into another big bin. I spend a better part of a afternoon to get this. Many times there's not that much "good" lumber.. Had it been something other than walnut I probably might have declined the deal. Last year I got a couple loads of maple.. some spalted and some birdseye etc.. That was about the same size load of lumber I got. He goes through and cleans this stuff up every few years.. I can get all the free cutoffs from the mill so long as I stand there and sort it as they run the mill.. fresh off the saw.. The issue with that is I have to be there to do it and it's green / undried.. Those short pieces many times split if you try to run in the kiln.. sometimes stickered and air drying I can get lucky and salvage maybe half of what I drag home.. but has to be sticker dried for at least a year.. Just not a very practical way to do it.. I am fortunate to be able to do all this but it does come with a price and a lot of work / hassle to sell it.. My brother that owns the mill is my oldest brother of 7 brothers and I am the youngest. He's ( I think ) around 75 and this year has started a half retirement or just kinda working part time.. I'd love to go through my brothers stash of lumber.. Over the years when they'd run across some really neat grain etc.. he saved out some stuff.. being in the lumber business his whole life.. He has a big building stuffed full of really neat and probably rare pieces. I imagine one day I'll go through it.. He has told me several times to go in and sort through and take what I want.. as he'll never use it all. Problem.. none off it is really organized at all.. and I just don't have time to spend months / years going through it, LOL There is enough lumber in there to fill up several flat bed semi trucks.. LOL

My brother owns a lumber mill and I sometimes get a few boards here and there that they are going to toss out. Monday he called me and said he had a couple Walnut boards that I could have if I wanted them. If not he was going to cut them up and burn them in his wood stove. Here is the result.. all rough cut, most of it 6.5 foot long.. a few pieces are shorter because I cut them down so I could shut my tailgate on the truck.

Hey Tim, was good to meet you today and chat a while about woodworking etc. I hope the Hawk serves you as well as it had for me. Here is the manual online for the saw I said I'd post it later so you could look through it.. http://www.rbiwoodtools.com/files/SawManuals/model_220VS_serial_14052-20800.pdf Page 10 or 11 shows the starting point for blade tension that I was trying to explain to you. Any questions about it let me know. Hope to see some photos of projects soon. Oh, That little bit of walnut I said my brother with the sawmill told me to come get or he was burning it.. That turned into a full pickup truck load.. was dark before I got home so no photos until tomorrow I'll post my score of free walnut tomorrow, LOL.. I'm going to look through some of the spalted maple and other wood I have around here that I won't use most likely.. I'll let you know.. but I probably won't get to it until after the holidays. I'm sure I could send you home with a full truck load.

I don't like to see politics on this site and I always stay mostly out of conversation of politic online.. I do enjoy reading others opinions on polatics and world news and what have you but I do typically keep my opinions to myself.. Boy there sure gets to be some heated topics that goes into a grade school kids name calling etc. etc. We sure don't want that here and I totally respect the policies we have in place here.

Yes, that is so nice to hear from a family member. Thank you @Sheryl S! Many times online friends just up and disappear and you never really get any closure to what happen to them. Since Ben is also from Michigan his friendship here was different to me as we messaged back and forth about local lumber suppliers etc.. I wish we would have been able to meet up in person but that just never happened. He will surely be missed. My condolences to the family. Kevin

Yeah, had some of that stuff falling on Saturday.. first time for this season. ground is too warm and it melted within a few hours.. I'm not ready for it just yet but did haul my firewood last week so I should have enough to stay warm for the winter in both the shop and the house.

I'll give a call tomorrow, what is a good time to catch you on the phone? I hope to not be in the shop too much tomorrow as I have 2 truck loads of walnut given to me that I hope to haul home tomorrow.

We need one called the pop corn lounge

I get a lot of my wood from LLJohnson Lumber ( The Work Bench ) in Charlotte Michigan.. Take a drive and check out the place sometime.. they have a showroom of tools etc.. lots of different lumber from domestic to exotic.. plywood.. Baltic birch plywood. They'll cut to size.. they'll plane lumber to size. they sell lumber carry bundle packs where they give you bulk pricing on smaller carry packs. The more you buy the better the deals, LOL They run a "wood expo " every September and have huge sales on everything they sell, have vendors there and do demonstrations.. It's usually a three day event. The town of Charlotte also have what they call "frontier days" and all kind of events going on in that small town at the same time. They have a craft show going on in and around the courthouse lawn etc.. They're running a Black Friday sale and have vendors and demos too I think. http://theworkbench.com/

I hate it when I miss the good stuff... But today I barely have time to read the good stuff and certainly don't have time to make the pop corn.. Thanks Travis for keeping the site cleaned up.

Well since I work right here at my house / shop I'm here 99% of the time. I'll send you a PM so we can get the details worked out.

IF I thought I could flip it if I didn't like the saw.. I'd buy in a heartbeat.. I paid $100 for my 220vs I have about another $200 in upgrades and refurbishing it.. etc.. Nobody local wants it for $300.. I see people buying them and bragging about the great deal they got on a old beat up single speed hawk that they paid $400 for, LOL.. I don't really want to fool with shipping but I'd meet up or help with delivery within a few hour drive.. I know I could put it on ebay and have it shipped via Fastenal or greyhound pretty reasonable.. I just don't care if it sells that bad to deal with shipping... It's a great back-up saw and the upper arm goes up way higher than the other saws do so it is my go to saw for larger projects as it's easy to bottom feed the blade the way that arm goes way up.. This Hegner to me "looks" rough compared to my Hawk.. if I can't pull $250 - 300 for the Hawk that runs and looks almost new.. I don't think It'd be a quick sell to flip the Hegner if I didn't like it. This is a picture of my Hawk 220vs, That Hegner looks like it was drag behind a car for a couple blocks, compared to my Hawk..

Well, saws in this area are not really selling all that great and they haven't for quite some time. I have no desire to drag another saw home that I can't get what it's really worth or what they used to sell for out of it. IF I sell one of my saws then that's a different case.. I got space to put more saws but how many do I need setting around here waiting on someone to buy one. I've been seeing deals just like this one set for a long time before they finally sell.. I half wonder what this saw will be priced at next time he list it, LOL I'd not mind having it but one of my saws need to go " before " I strike a deal on this one. I'm sure it needs a good cleaning, greasing, tuned etc. etc. so even at the $275.. You know me.. I'll have to go through it and replace any worn parts.. The saw might end up costing me $350 and if he can't sell it at $275 I probably couldn't either, even going through it and cleaning it up. LOL