Aside from the fact that they ship promptly, have good prices and a broad selection, I have something new to like about them, customer service. It’s easy to complain about poor customer service, I like to highlight good experiences as well.

About 5 months ago I bought a new 1″ Lennox Tri-master blade for my Minimax. It hung up on the wall until 2 weeks ago when I had to do some resawing and wanted to be precise enough about it to go through the effort of swapping the blade (it’s amazing how much you can do with a 3/8″ 3tpi blade!). After running the first piece through I noticed that the finish was well below what I would get on the other Trimaster I have, also 1″ but now a backup blade. I spun the wheel and two things jumped out, there was a distinct bump on the weld and the blade had a second weld in it. I took a blue sharpie marker and colored the welds, ran a scrap piece through and there was definitely a distortion on one of the welds.

I sent an email to Carbide over the weekend using their online form asking about two welds and the distortion, but honestly I was prepared for the worst because I had bought this 5 months ago and even though I hadn’t used it, how would they know that, I figured.

Dan Kreps got back to me a few days later with a return authorization and an explanation that two welds in one blade is not normal and sometimes Lennox adds a segment to a short roll and their guys don’t catch it when they make the blade. I sent the blade back to them last thursday and today UPS delivered a new blade to me. A quick run over the weld with my finger suggests this blade will be just right.