The first impressions are that, like the DIY Tools site, there is an awful lot on offer here. The home page has a wealth of different links on it, and scrolls down much further than on most sites. There’s a reasonably light feel to the site, and plenty of white.
Where can I find the website?
The website is found at www.northerntooluk.com.
A Selection of the Best Selling Mitre Saws from The Northern Tool Company
How do I find the mitre saws section of the site?
This site is one of the few where I would recommend using the search facility. The designers have put it right in your line of sight, on the top banner in the very centre, and the quickest way to go to the mitre saws is simply to type them into the search engine. Usefully there is also an ‘Advanced Search’ feature where you can go straight to a particular model.
If you want to go straight there the dedicated URL for this search just visit
http://www.northerntooluk.com/search.
What types and brands of mitre saw do they offer?
There is a huge range on this site, with the following brands available, including Ryobi, De Walt, Einhell, Draper, Bosch, Hitachi, Sealey and Festool. In fact almost everything except Makita!
There are sliding compound mitre saws, sliding compound mitre saws with and without laser guides and sliding cross-cut mitre saws.
The range is middle to top end stuff – with uber-smart mitre saws by Festool, costing almost £1000, at the top of the list. Having said that the site features a couple of models by Ryobi and Einhell which are at the more budget end (around £100) but these do not compare with the cheap own brand models on some other sites.
Are there any buying guides or useful sections of information about mitre saws?
Yes, this site has sensibly written and informative paragraphs about the saws and also peer review sections. It’s unusual to have both and does make it very easy to get the information you need at the point of sale. As always the peer reviews should be taken with a pinch of salt, and are not always available.
When you first look at a product you get a thumbnail of its main features and then when you click on it you get a much fuller set of information. Then, if you scroll down you get customer reviews (if any have been left) and you can see an ‘ask our experts’ link for getting information, although there is no guarantee about feedback times.
There is a manufacturer technical help section – which effectively outsources the provision of technical support. This section has the relevant tech support telephone number for each brand.
Anything else I should know about?
Always scroll down on this site, as some of the most useful information sections are at the bottom. In particular there is a ‘most popular alternative items’ page which lists saws that other people have bought of a similar nature.
You can choose how many products are displayed in one scroll window. This makes it quite easy, for example with the mitre saws, to simply hit the 1-60 range and have the whole lot on one screen.
You can also filter the products in many more ways than on other sites, by blade diameter for example, or by type (with or without laser etc).
Delivery looks to range from 2-7 days, depending on the model and manufacturer.
In conclusion
The Northern Tool site is a no frills, robust sort of site to visit. It is aimed pretty much exclusively at men (with tag lines like “If power corrupts we can make you a very bad man”) and it only sells mitre saws as a small sub-division of what looks like a much bigger agricultural and heavy machinery trade.
From the perspective of general DIY, unless you have a very wide definition of DIY, it is of restricted relevance. However the mitre saw brands are top end, and although the spread of models is limited it is a no-nonsense supplier and as such it deserves a look.