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Share your Magna memorabilia!

creichen44

I dug my family's Shopsmith out of hiding in the basement to see what was there, turns out quite a bit. Enjoy the pics. Oh yeah, anyone know what the small slotted table is. Odd thing, it is spring loaded, so if pivoted, it returns. Thanks!

jsburger

That fits on the in feed side of the saw table to extend the miter slot to make wider cross cuts with the miter gauge.

chapmanruss

creichen44,

Nice collection of many still in their original boxes' items. John already explained the Front Table Extension. I did notice in the third picture you have a Router/Shaper Fence but that one is for the Mark VII made in the 1960's. To use it on a Mark 5 holes must be drilled into the Table top in the correct place. Below is a picture of a "Greenie" era Shaper Fence for the Mark 5/V 500 with the original Table system which also fits on the Model 10E and 10ER Table as shown.

Shaper Fence P-N 11 700 on 10ER.jpg

JPG

Good Catch. Not sure drilling is a good idea. JMO

creichen44

Thanks all for the info, not sure I'm up for drilling to make that piece fit, my luck I'd wreck something...

chapmanruss

creichen44,

I would be hesitant to drill into the tabletop too.

Since you have the Mark VII Shaper Fence, I have to wonder if your Mark 5 Main Table has already been drilled to use it. The picture below shows a Mark VII Main Table with the Shaper Fence mounting holes indicated by the arrows. On your Mark 5 Main Table, they would be in a similar position but may be on the other side of the Table Insert. The Mark VII can do under table shaping and routing which accounts for the holes being on the right side of the table insert instead of the left side where the Mark 5 Shaper Fence is used. For under table shaping and routing the Mark VII Main Table is rotated 180 degrees from its position shown in the picture below.

Sorry John, we have kind of gone off topic again. :o

creichen44,

If you want to continue learning and asking questions about your Shopsmith I would suggest starting your own thread. That way you can have information specific to your Shopsmith in one place.

Mark VII Main Table - arrows.jpg

jpdalton

Win The Wives, And You Win The Day!

(It’s been a bit of time since I’ve made a contribution here - thanks to those who’ve kept the thread going!)

In late 1948, after a full year in production, the new SHOPSMITH tool was making quite a splash, but the whiz kids at Magna weren’t sitting on their hands. No, they wanted a 10-E in every garage, and they had to figure out how to help all their potential customers win over the financial gatekeepers in all those households: the wives!

So articles like the attached were targeted to their buyers’ better half to help convey how much this new SHOPSMITH would benefit HER! Did it work? You be the judge…

jpdalton

Stop the presses! Oh, never mind…

So, I got some vintage Magna documents in the mail today from a recent online auction, and an item included in the pack was one I’d seen many times before - the May 1957 price list and accessories catalog.

Nothing special about this. A lot were printed back in the day, with a lot seeming to have survived to today. But for some reason I gave this one a little closer look, especially on the back page where the 10er-compatible accessories were listed.

It was a pretty small list of accessories for the 10er by 1957 (clearly the focus was on the Mark 5, and even these meager offerings would disappear altogether in a couple of years, with the release of the new Mark 2!). Even a couple of years earlier, the 10er accessories were fairly numerous, as shown on this 1955 accessories catalog.

But in making that comparison, I noticed something you numismatists in the group would appreciate - like all those double-struck anomalies in the coin world that make otherwise ordinary coins rare and valuable: that’s not a 10er table insert!

So, does this fall into the category of the graphic artists at Magna taking some shortcuts, or the printers telling them there’s no time for an update as the presses wait for no one?!

Or maybe I just have too much time on my hands…

edma194

jpdalton wrote So, does this fall into the category of the graphic artists at Magna taking some shortcuts, or the printers telling them there’s no time for an update as the presses wait for no one?!

I'm guessing the graphic artists took a shortcut under time pressure. Ads were all laid out by hand back then, but even today when it's all on a computer and no paper is involved they still make mistakes in the advertising material. The recent introductory ads for the Gen 2 PowerPro mistakenly listed a headstock upgrade kit for the same price as an entire headstock. You still might have the only such copy in existence though and it would still be a rare find within our world.

chapmanruss

The catalogs have had a lot of errors over the years. John, your example above is an obvious error for the Model 10 Table Inserts. When trying to figure out when changes occurred the catalogs are the last thing I look at.

jpdalton

How Magna packed those smaller accessories

I’ve heard a number of my fellow vintage machine enthusiasts state that one of the best parts of acquiring a new old machine is looking through the “goodie box” - the place where the previous owner stashed a lot of the add-on parts, accessories, docs, etc. - you just never know what you’re going to find!

I’m the same way with packs of documents I pick up on eBay - I always look forward to the other stuff that’s tucked in with what the seller thought was valuable. Got one of those document packs recently, and this was inside (the card came with the documents - I added the Allen wrench just for the picture):

I’ve seen lots of similar tags that were attached to new SPTs back in the day, but had no clue how the minor accessories like Allen wrenches were packed with the Mark 5 until I saw this. Always surprising what folks saved back in the day…

jpdalton

Magna Marketing to Their Best Prospects

This is [physically] the smallest article of Magna marketing literature I’ve ever seen - a 2.75” x 4” fold-out directed to their best prospects: current Shopsmith owners!

The 7-panel parable from early 1955 encourages existing Model 10-ER owners to return to their dealer for some advice on options to privately sell or trade in their venerable old “SMITTY” in favor of the new, state-of-the-art Mark 5.

One of those options - trade-in - didn’t appear to have much institutional support from Magna. Here’s their guidance to dealers on the topic from the same era. Sounds like, “Hey, don’t give them too much in trade and cripple your business. And oh, by the way, don’t look to us to contribute…”

jpdalton

Montgomery Ward-branded 10-E Manual

Picked up a 10-E (serial number E 8100) machine this weekend - didn’t really need another in the garage, but the price was right ($0!), so what the heck, right? It’ll be a bit of a project to bring back to life, but that’s the fun part…

Anyway, it came with some original documentation, which always piques my interest, and I got a nice one to add to the collection!

Have never seen a Montgomery Ward-branded version of the 10-E manual before! What other MW-branded SS manuals are out there??

chapmanruss

I believe those Model 10E ones were the only Owner's Guide or Manuals to have the Montgomery Ward name on them. All the Model 10ER Owner's Guides, the two Jig Saw Manuals and the Model 4E Jointer Manual I have seen do not. The Article Nos. did continue on later Owner's Guides and Manuals which I suspect was a Montgomery Ward reference thing. The Model 10E Magna Engineering Corporation Owner's Guide cover pictured below does not have Article Nos. It is the same Owner's Guide as the Montgomery Ward Owner's Guide but for Model 10E's sold by other dealers.

Sorry I cannot check my library of Shopsmith printed materials to verify this, but all of that is packed for the movers. So much to pack still by next Tuesday morning.

10E 1948 Magna p1.jpg

jpdalton

chapmanruss wrote
the two Jig Saw Manuals… I have seen do not.

Russ, once your move is complete, you and I should compare notes on our respective catalogs of manuals! I’ve got a few variants of the jigsaw manual (5 in total, if you count back cover variations).

jpdalton

Vintage 5-in-1 Brochures

Some of the recent posts to this thread about manuals got me thinking a bit about some other items in my document collection. And while I was organizing some of those document files today, I thought a group shot was in order! This is a sampling of Shopsmith brochures covering all the 5-in-1 systems from the 1940s through the 1960s.

There are a lot of variants to these that I don’t have pictured - the greenie Mark 5 ones in particular used a lot of different back covers.

chapmanruss

The Mark 2 brochure always makes me laugh a little bit. It starts out with presents "the all new SHOPSMITH mark 2" but ends with "NOW ONLY $179.90" making it sound like a price reduction. What, a price reduction on a new item? :rolleyes:

Of course, it is much cheaper when compared to the Mark V at that time.

rcsaylor

Thank you for sharing! Love seeing old advertising.

jpdalton

rcsaylor wrote Thank you for sharing! Love seeing old advertising.

Thanks for tuning in and commenting! I’ve been collecting these items for so long - it’s great to have a chance to share them with the community.

jpdalton

chapmanruss wrote
The Mark 2 brochure always makes me laugh a little bit. It starts out with presents "the all new SHOPSMITH mark 2" but ends with "NOW ONLY $179.90" making it sound like a price reduction.

Yeah, the pricing history on Mark 2 systems is hard to follow. Even that $179.90 price only got you a system without a motor or stand - just like 10-E days!

Then sometime later, that same $179.90 dropped to $159.88! Even then, it would cost you around $209 to get a usable Mark 2 (with motor and stand).

Then to confuse things further, i have a documented purchase of a system, motor, and stand in April 1958 for $189.88! Same part numbers as the catalog… they just don’t add up to the total of the catalog prices.

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