I also run the lapidary shop for our rock club, which has five saws- a brand new (12 months) Highland Park 14 auto feed, an old Lortone 14in., another older Highland park 18in. My two favorite saws are a fourteen inch 1964 Highland Park and a 18 in. I own seven saws, but my husband and I have been buying and refurbishing equipment for the past ten years. Mike, I am new to this forum but have been cutting for years. I would love to place my order to HP, but would feel even better if there were a few more positive reinforcements. It's already older than I am (that's really old) and held together with bailing wire and sundry make-shifts from the Ace Hardware particle drawers. I'm not sure how much life my LS-12 has left. I'm heartened by previous posters in this thread who are happy with the equipment and am hopeful they have rectified any quality problems they may have had. He said the metal was sub-standard and all the tolerances got blown in short order. I was reading a forum post (can't remember where) about a disgruntled customer who bought a new HP saw only to wear it out in about a year. Their prices are great as well! However, the China connection has me a little sketched out. They certainly seem to be building on good ideas and introducing some great innovations in an otherwise dead industry. I've creeped the HP website many times and watched all the videos about their saw enhancements. The one thing I do like about Highland is that they have a better adjustment for the arbor plate that allows you to micro adjust the blade from the top without having to try to hold a wrench under the arbor plate in the oil like the Lortone. I'll spend the extra money and buy lortone. Good luck if you need parts for the saws or even if they don't have the saw ready to ship. I finally called Lortone and asked if Highland had bought any rights to their saws and then cancelled my orders with Highland. I did not get updates from Highland at any time, they sat quiet so each month I would have to call and ask where are my saws or parts and every time it would oh we ran into some issue and they have been pushed back another 3 to 4 weeks. I had also ordered the 10 and 12" saws and waited months and each time the date got shoved back again and again. It took me over 4 months to get the split nuts meanwhile the saw was out of commission. I tried ordering a new set from Highland. I asked to also buy all the parts that would wear and need replacing and the sold me a couple bushing but not the split nut that is brass and is what controls the vice down the feed rod This is probably be the first thing that wears out on your saw. Now my personal experience with Highland park was buying an 18" saw before I found out that they really weren't related to the original Highland company. Quote from: Slabbercabber on October 16, 2017, 05:16:36 AM From the Highland Park website.Īlthough this may be what they have written in response to the Highland design, You may also notice that the new Chinese made Highland saws have also borrowed heavily if not more the Lortone designs for their 12" and 10" models that they now also make in China. While we are in no way associated with the original Highland Park Manufacturing Company, the equipment we manufacture meets or exceeds original specifications and our replacement parts fits much of the equipment made in the 1950’s 60’s and 70’s." Based this research, we filed for the Highland Park Lapidary trademark in 2009 was granted it in 2010 by the US Patent and Trademark Office. We had a great chat with him and learned a little about HP’s history and he verified that there were never any patents on the designs. We had heard that Contempo had purchased Highland Park related assets so we called up Bill Ritter (who owned Contempo) to see if what he could tell us about it. We found that there had been a trademark filed (but never granted) in 2005 but was abandoned in 2008 by Barranca Diamond. Before building our own saws, we first checked to see if there were any active HP trademarks or patents. We admire the pioneering work that HP did to create saws that are still in use after 50 years. "We chose the Highland Park Style slab saw because we believe this design is the very best.
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