Shopsmith Forums

I wanted to square up a piece of plywood so I put the rip fence on the extension table and moved the carriage and headstock towards it. After I made a couple of cuts I needed to reposition the blade again. Because the headstock and carriage move independently I had to spend a lot of time aligning the blade in the table insert, etc. is there some well known way to get the carriage and headstock to move together?

It is not necessary to center the blade in the insert in order to saw. However---
The way I move the carriage and headstock together is to keep pressure on the rubber spacing disk. This way you can push the headstock toward the carriage or push the carriage toward the headstock and retain the same relation of the blade to the insert. This is not necessarily exact to the nearest thousandths of inch, but pretty close.

The spacer(rubber or plastic if older) will only work if the proper saw blade arbor is used. Mark 5/V/VII require a short arbor. The 505-520 require a longer arbor.

Ohgary wrote:I wanted to square up a piece of plywood so I put the rip fence on the extension table and moved the carriage and headstock towards it. After I made a couple of cuts I needed to reposition the blade again. Because the headstock and carriage move independently I had to spend a lot of time aligning the blade in the table insert, etc. is there some well known way to get the carriage and headstock to move together?

Do you have a rubber bumper between the headstock and carriage on at least one of the way tubes?

dusty wrote:

Ohgary wrote:I wanted to square up a piece of plywood so I put the rip fence on the extension table and moved the carriage and headstock towards it. After I made a couple of cuts I needed to reposition the blade again. Because the headstock and carriage move independently I had to spend a lot of time aligning the blade in the table insert, etc. is there some well known way to get the carriage and headstock to move together?

Do you have a rubber bumper between the headstock and carriage on at least one of the way tubes?

No rubber. Were those used on the Model 500? Is it something I can fabricate locally?

With no rubber bumper, your situation is to be expected.

Yes, you could fabricate something to work in place of the rubber bumper. Some folks have reported making them from pvc. For a short while, I had one made of wood and it spanned across both way tubes. The purpose, for this particular application, is to occupy a specific amount of space between the headstock and carriage. You can determine that distance empirically ( measure it ).

I have also seen one made from something like a heater hose. Getting the exact dimension may be difficult.

3/8"

If you want the official version, the next time you have a more substantial order, you can add one or two Carriage Stop Rings to your order. Part 504165 for the 500 - $2.85/ea. The only reason I say to get two is that my blade/slot never lined up, so I ordered a new ring, which was about 3/8" wider than the one on the machine (510/520 version is wider than the 500 version), so it was either always too small, or I or the previous owner did something to "shrink" it.

Mike

When I unpacked my 510, I thought the rubber stop ring was part of the packing, so I sliced it and then discarded. I operated for years without one.

Finding out that it should be there, I bought another and put it on. After a while I slit that one so I could take it off and put it on without any mechanical freeing of the way tubes.

Even with the slit, it works just fine when on the way tube.

Mike907 wrote:If you want the official version, the next time you have a more substantial order, you can add one or two Carriage Stop Rings to your order. Part 504165 for the 500 - $2.85/ea. The only reason I say to get two is that my blade/slot never lined up, so I ordered a new ring, which was about 3/8" wider than the one on the machine (510/520 version is wider than the 500 version), so it was either always too small, or I or the previous owner did something to "shrink" it.

Mike

As shown on the SS website that part number appears to be an O-ring. The actual part is more like a tube, 2 or 3 inches long, right? (I remember seeing a shot of it on one of the on-line videos but I watched so many I don't remember which one it was in.) But I will take the advice offered to merely measure the distance and proceed accordingly.