Shopsmith Forums

I hope for this thread to be a one-stop resource for everything pertaining to the Sawsmith Radial Arm Saw. As I've been researching the saw, it seems that what little information there is is scattered across several places. This is my attempt to pool everything together into one location like I wish I could have found on my research.

I will keep this first post updated with new resources and information as I find it.

Documentation (PDF files)
- Owner's Manual (Magna American Corp, 1964)
- Owner's Manual (Magna American Corp, 1963)
- Owner's Manual (Yuba Power Products, 1960)
- Owner's Manual (Yuba, 1959 - same as 1960 other than date on cover)

- Parts List and Exploded View (Magna, 1964)
- Parts List and Exploded View (Magna, 1963)
- Parts List and Exploded View (Yuba, 1960)

- Assembly Instructions (Magna, 1964)
- Assembly Instructions (Yuba, 1959)

- Cabinet Stand (Magna, 1963)
- Cabinet Stand (Yuba, 1960)
- Sawsmith Stand (legs) (Yuba, 1960)

- Repair Procedures and Service Bulletins

- Shopsmith and Sawsmith Accessories (Magna, 1964)
- Shopsmith and Sawsmith Reference Chart (Magna, 1963)
- Accessory Catalog and Price List (Yuba, July 1960)
- Accessory Catalog and price List (Yuba, March 1960)

- Sales Flyer (Yuba, 1959-60?)
- Brochure (Yuba, 1959)
- Magna-Line Power Tools (Yuba, 1957)

Document Collection - All above documents in a single Zip file.

External Sites - Sawsmith Specific
- Shopsmith, Inc. (has serial number date chart)
- Yahoo Sawsmith RAS Group
- Tool-Hunter Blog
- Vintage Machinery - Yuba Power Products, Magna American, Corp.

External Sites - General Radial Arm Saw
- Radial Arm Saw Tune-Up
- Mr. Sawdust -Book: "How To Master The Radial Arm Saw" (First chapter mentions Shopsmith extensively.)
- Radial Arm Saw Video Presentation

Index of posts in this thread
- <maybe coming sometime>

A Brief History of the Sawsmith Radial Arm Saw
(copied and pasted from http://sawsmith-tool-hunter.blogspot.com/)
Serial numbers referenced on http://www.shopsmith.com/ownersite/faq/radialarmsaw.htm indicate the first Sawsmith radial arm saw was introduced in December 1957 by Magna Engineering of Menlo Park California. (Some references mention “Magna Power Tool Corp.”). Magna Engineering was founded by a partnership of Hans Goldschmidt, the inventor of the first Shopsmith multi-purpose tool the 10ER, and brothers Frank and Robert Chambers.

Yuba was a HUGE conglomerate that started during the San Francisco gold rush in the 1800’s. After operating successfully all those years, in 1957 Yuba's directors were warned that by the late 1960s the company's long-profitable gold fields would peter out. Hoping to diversify the company (then called Yuba Consolidated Gold Fields), started buying-up companies like a rich drunken sailor. Yuba was already manufacturing a line of garden tillers and was looking for a line of items that could fill the slow winter months. Woodworking was more of a winter activity, so the Shopsmith line looked like the perfect match. Early in 1958 Magna Engineering merged with Yuba Consolidated Industries. Goldschmidt headed Yuba's engineering efforts until 1960, then left to operate his own toy and game design company.

Things went very bad for Yuba. According to a March 1962 Time Magazine article titled “How Not To Grow“, the wild spending on poorly managed companies left Yuba bankrupt. By 1961 a group of former employees of Yuba formed the company Magna American, and these folks went on to produce the Sawsmith, Mark VII and several garden tools including tillers until they too ran into trouble. By 1965 the last Sawsmith left the Magna plant, and the tools went into storage.

In 1972 John Folkerth, a stock broker in Dayton, Ohio, purchased a Sawsmith from a widow friend of his mother, and when he went on a search for a replacement blade for it he instead found the tooling that Magna had in storage. John spent some time raising funds and purchased the tooling for the entire Shopsmith and Sawsmith line and moved it to Dayton, Ohio.

The rest of the story that I’ve never seen in print is despite such statements in old Shopsmith Inc. literature that “Shopsmith still owns the tooling for the Sawsmith and that they could one day revive the tool“; the truth is it was determined years ago that the Sawsmith would be too difficult to sell in our lawsuit-happy country, so the tooling was sold for scrap.

------------------


Excerpt from the eBay Buying Guide "Finding Hidden Shopsmith Tools, Aftermarket Accessories"
(http://www.ebay.com/gds/Finding-Hidden- ... 76/g.html)
In the late 1950’s Magna and the ShopSmith line was purchased by the lawn and garden tool manufacturer Yuba Power Products, Inc. of Cleveland, Ohio. Within just a few years a group of employees incorporated as Magna American Corp. and acquired the ShopSmith product line from Yuba, but by 1966 the company and the ShopSmith product line died. All told the ShopSmith line had been moved from San Diego, CA to Fort Wayne, IN, to Menlo Park, CA, to Cincinnati, OH, and ultimately to what was to be its final resting place, Raymond, MS. What a wild ride!

But then something unexpected happened. A Dayton, Ohio stockbroker named John Folkerth, at the urging of his mother, purchased a SawSmith RAS from a widowed friend. On a quest for a replacement saw blade John ended-up in Mississippi at the all but deceased Magna America, where he found not only the blade, but also the tooling to produce the entire Shopsmith tool line and boxes of unanswered mail with orders for parts that included un-cashed checks! In 1972 with investors to back him Mr. Folkerth formed Shopsmith Inc. to resume manufacturing with all the original equipment purchased from Magna. An interesting point to remember is that from 1947 to 1972 the name ShopSmith was the brand name of a line of tools, not the name of a company. This all changed in 1972 when John chose to embrace the ShopSmith line as the entire focus of his new company.
The tooling was moved to Troy, Ohio with the original plan being to produce spare parts for all the old Magna and Yuba ShopSmith brand tools, but before long they realized that there was no need to just sell parts, they could also assemble the parts and sell complete tools! They chose to focus on the most popular and robust 5-in-1 tool, the Mark V.

This is a tour/overview of the Sawsmith Radial Arm Saw. I have not yet done a complete cleanup/restoration so you'll see a lot of old sawdust, gunk, spider webs, etc in the pictures.



Going from the top down.

On the top of the arm is a key and the Start/Stop buttons. The key activates a plunger which allows the START button to be pressed. With the key locked (in the position shown below), the start button can not be pressed. The start button is recessed below the casting of the arm, so the chance of accidentally pressing it is minimized.



The stop button extends above the casting so it is very easy to find a press quickly. The picture below shows the key unlocked and the start button pressed with the stop button raised.



On the front end of the arm is the miter lock handle. It has 3 positions. "Lock":



"Index" (This will stop the swivel at indexed stops at 0 degrees, 45 degrees, and 90 degrees.)



And "Release" (You have to pull the handle all the way to "Release" to get past the indexed degrees.)



The "natural" location of the handle is at "Index." From there, you have to apply pressure to pull it down to "Release" and you have to manually hold it there or it will swing back to "Index." And you have to push quite firmly to push the handle up to the "Lock" position.

The back of the arm has a miter scale.

On the right side of the arm is the carriage lock. The handle has two positions - Release and Lock. As you might guess, the Release position allows the carriage to move in and out on the arm. The lock position locks it in place.



The lock mechanism works by push a special brass jam screw against the track on the arm.



A set screw with a very pointy tip seats in grooves on the jam screw to keep it from rotating. The jam screw is threaded onto the handle with left handed threads. When the handle is pushed back, it pulls the jam screw against the track on the arm locking the carriage in place via friction. When the handle is pulled forward, it pushes the jam screw away from the track, releasing the carriage. The brass jam screw can be adjusted by backing out the set screw and rotating the jam screw, then advance the set screw back. You don't want the set screw to be so tight that it keeps the brass jam screw from moving in and out.
You just want it to prevent the screw from turning.

If there is any slop between the carriage and the tracks, you can adjust that here as well. The bearings that ride on the track attach to the carriage on eccentric bolts. Slightly loosen the nuts on top, rotate the bolt from underneath to press the bearing against the track to take out the slack, then re-tighten the nut on top.



On the left side of the arm is the yoke swivel lock.



This has three positions. "Release" which allows you to swivel the yoke. "Index" which stops the yoke at indexed positions at 0 degrees, 45 degrees, and 90 degrees. And "Lock" which locks it wherever you want. There is no gauge, only the indexes.

The index mechanism uses a spring pressurized pin.



With the handle pulled forward to "Release", the pin is raised. With the handle on "Index" the pin is allowed to drop down into holes in the top of the yoke as it swivels. The handle itself is attached via a set screw to a threaded screw clamp. With the handle on "lock", this screw presses down on a friction ring which presses against the plate on top of the yoke and keeps it from moving. The amount of pressure on the yoke can be adjusted by the location of the handle on the screw clamp.

On the front of the yoke is the main handle, a bevel gauge, and the speed control. The main handle has a locking nob above it that locks the motor assembly at the desired bevel. A rod goes from the lock nob, through the handle, to a cam under the handle. As the knob is turned, the cam engages or releases the lock. I think the earlier version incorporated this lock into the handle itself and I think I would like that better. As it is, it takes too hands to hold and lock the bevel. If it were in the handle itself, it would take only one hand. But maybe the chance of unlocking it during a cut was considered a safety hazard and was the reason for the change?



The bevel is indexed at 0 degrees, 45 degrees, and 90 degrees. A plunger is located just in front of your hand. This plunger can be pulled out to go past the index marks, or released to catch at the indexed degrees. You adjust the assembly by releasing the three bolts below the plunger, setting the blade 90 degrees with the table, locking the handle, then tightening the three bolts. It takes a bit of coordination, but using my Wixey instead of a square against the table helped a lot.



At the bottom front of the yoke is the speed control dial. This is marked with different speeds from 17 to 64. These numbers corespond with the RPM - just add two zeroes to the number. For instance, a speed setting of 17 equals 1700 RPM and a speed setting of 64 equals 6400 RPM.



The variable speed works similar to the Shopsmith in that it uses variable sheaves. Like the old Mark VII, it uses a cam. Unlike the old Mark VII, the cam is not plastic. The cam, when turned, changes the location of a movable sheave in relation to a fixed sheave to change the diameter of the lower pulley.



The upper pulley uses a spring to continually press the outer sheave against the inner sheave and it reacts to the change in belt tension created by changes to the lower pulley.



The last two pictures show the belt position at each end of the speed range. Due to the relative small amount of movement, and an issue I'm experiencing with my dial (video here), I think some maintenance and adjustment is in order here. But I don't yet know what is wrong and how to fix it.

Each end of the motor spindle is threaded. (I haven't checked the thread size.) The spindle is 5/8" diameter, and has the tapered flat just like the Shopsmith spindle. It's just threaded in addition. I think the earlier model had a non-threaded spindle just like the Shopsmith. Even threaded, it is still a nice tight fit with the attachments I have put on it with absolutely not slop at all.



The left spindle has left handed threads. The right spindle has normal right handed threads. A typical saw blade with a 5/8" bore can be mounted directly on the spindle with the addition of washers and a nut that threads directly on the spindle. The two nuts are clearly labeled for left and right. This allows mounting of the saw blade on either spindle. The blade guard can also be mounted on either side and there's a rubber boot that can slip over the unused spindle to keep it from grabbing anything.



An arbor allows use of Shopsmith blades with a 1.25" bore.



The 1.25" arbor attaches to the spindle using a set screw on the tapered flat as is typical on the Shopsmith. Each side is labeled with an arrow and how it should be mounted on the spindle.



Shopsmith attachments that mount to the spindle can be mounted on the Sawsmith. Such as the sanding disk, dado/shaper arbor, Jacob's chuck, etc.

Thanks for all your work putting together the info and the pictures. I think my SawSmith is a 1959 model. I quit following the Sawsmith website on Yahoo some time ago and haven't messed with my saw for a long time, but I keep thinking about doing so when I get a round tuit. Good luck on your restoration project. Thanks John McCrossen.

You're welcome, John, and thanks for the kind words. I plan to keep more info coming. Next, I'll be focusing on the sliding table and cabinet stand.

Anyone should feel free to post here with questions, comments, observations, or whatever you want to say.

Good job of putting all those pieces back together Heath. I will be interested in hearing how it performs once you get it tuned and lubed.

Great presentation.

Fred

As promised, the tour continues with the table, base, and cabinet.



The sliding table is one of the unique features to the Sawsmith. At least, I've never seen another RAS with a sliding table.



The sliding table gives you 20.5" of crosscut capacity whereas typical radial arm saws of this size give only 14" to 16" crosscut capacity.



A channel assembly mounted under the table sides on rails mounted to the saw base.



Nylon guides on the table channels slide on the base rails. Horizontal table alignment and adjustment is done using the bolts on the outside of the table channel assembly that move the nylon glide closer or further away from the table.



You adjust these four bolts to take any lateral play out of the table and align the fence. The front guide on either side also acts as the locking mechanism. Handles at the front of the channel assembly turn a bar which, when rotated, acts as a cam and squeezes the nylon guide against the rail to lock the table in place. This lock can be adjusted by the bolt under the guide.

A bolt in a T-nut in the middle of the table acts as a stop and keeps the table from sliding all the way off the front. To remove the table, back out this screw until it clears the base.



The table height is adjusted and leveled by cam lifts under each rail on the sides of the saw base. There are two of these cam lifts for each rail.