New to forum

[shydragon]

Hi all, I'm new to the forum.

I bought a Mark 510 in 1992 along with 11" Bandsaw w/power station and a 4" jointer. I really enjoyed using it. Then in 94 went through a divorce and put it all in storage. Just this week, pulled it out and started getting all the parts and accessories together.

I've been browsing the forum and the shopsmith site, and when I look at the price of attachments, I have to wonder if it would be better to buy stand alone equipment? Unless space is a problem. Just a thought.

But, since I do own one of these, this forum will be a great resource.

[paulmcohen]

What part of Oregon?

Standalone vs. Shopsmith as a religious debate. The Shopsmith accessories generally have features standalone tools don't have, for example the bandsaw is variable speed. I frequently cut plastic at slow speed. I just found out I can even use the speed reducer to cut at extremely slow speeds.

There are lots of other examples I will let others chime in on, for me it is simply an issue of space.

[a1gutterman]

Pat,
Glad to have you! As Paul said, there are things that you can do with a Mark V and the SPT's that go with it, that are unique.

The SS drill press is one of the best; speed changes are instant and easy; the table is extra large.

You already have the bandsaw; ShopSmith AND after market accessories are available that increase it's versatility.

How much wood a stand alone horizontal boring machine cost? And where wood you put it?

Can a stand alone planer or jointer sharpen their own blades? The Mark V conical disk sander used in conjunction with the sharpening jig will!

Another plus is the fact that more and more after market companies are producing tools and accessories that are made to work with/on the Mark V and SPT's.

There are unlimited examples. Experience will tell. Just start using it!

[kalynzoo]

Welcome Pat. First, I have no interest in Shopsmith, other than being an owner. Prior to purchasing a SS at State Fair, after years of drooling at the demos, I had a garage full of stand alone tools. Mostly Craftsman and Black&Decker, and all low or medium end. I could never get a clean cut on the tablesaw. The drill press required that the case be opened to change the belt to change the speed. The BD bandsaw was an expensive toy. I never had a lathe. I find the solid surface of the SS worth the investment. With all of my other toys I have always purchased the best I could afford, and I have realized the value of my purchases. Now that I am semi-retired (I have to work to keep my grandchildren in gifts) and I have time for woodworking, I truly appreciate the value of a fine tool. Hawk scroll saw, ShopSmith, Craftsman air compressor, Dremel, etc. Best of luck with your woodworking.

[charlese]

Hi all, I'm new to the forum.

I bought a Mark 510 in 1992 along with 11" Bandsaw w/power station and a 4" jointer. I really enjoyed using it. Then in 94 went through a divorce and put it all in storage. Just this week, pulled it out and started getting all the parts and accessories together.

I've been browsing the forum and the shopsmith site, and when I look at the price of attachments, I have to wonder if it would be better to buy stand alone equipment? Unless space is a problem. Just a thought.

But, since I do own one of these, this forum will be a great resource.

Hi Pat! Also, Welcome to the forum and hoping we will hear from you often. I want to take a little different tack on your question.

You bet! Prices have gone up quite a bit since the early 90s! Some of the Shopsmith prices are even scary - at least to me. The big news is Shopsmith has been able to retain their quality. There is another GREAT feature that comes with Shopsmith tools - but will mention that at the end of this post.

Whether or not a wood worker wants to go to stand alone power tools is a consideration that contains many - many questions. If the woodworker is most often using heavy, thick lumber that needs quite a bit of long rip cuts and wide surface jointing, then maybe he/she needs one of the 8 to 10 inch jointers and a long fixed outfeed table. Maybe one of those European combo machines will fit the bill. But here you can't begin to compare prices. A guy would be into magnitudes more $$$ than the Shopsmith prices before blinking an eye.

Having mostly Shopsmith tools, I have altered my procedures in order to do anything needed. I've often wished I had the ability to joint wider boards, without using a bench plane, but hand planes work swell for my purposes, and keep me down to basics a bit. As far a ripping long boards, I simply don't have that need. The longest I seem to have a need to rip are around 4.5 ft.

Although tool changeovers are required operations, I have found it best to sometimes alter my production steps (and sometimes have to set up twice) and try real hard to plan operations. The needed changeovers are really just a mind set. They aren't bad at all!

Now let's get to the single biggest advantage of Shopsmith over ALL of the other brands of woodworking tools found in most home shops. That would be (is) the wonderful customer service from the company! If you have a need to call the company, you will quickly see what I mean. Always, 100% of the time there is a welcoming, helpful person there. Also, you'll never find a two year guarantee on other brands, plus you won't find a lifetime warranty on defects from manufacturing and/or workmanship. A free service hotline, where the company is honestly interested in your problems.

[mtobey]

I,too, am new to SS. About 6-7 months now. I have good standalone tablesaw, bandsaw, drillpress, beltsander and scrollsaw. The inherent precision of the two ShopSmiths I own have made them my default powertools. And, they are in my basement with nice heat and air conditioning. If you check my signature line you will see that I have covered the special purpose tools from ShopSmith pretty well. Change overs are a matter of a couple of minutes. SPEED CONTROL is such a huge bonus, I had to shout it.CUSTOMER SERVICE-shouting again. SS #1 has Incra Miter and Miter Express that is almost always ready to go. Adjustable collar gives quite precise cut depth/height settings. Putting those back on is a 2 minute job. Then, I have jointer and Strip Sander on #2. My belt sander sits on a power stand- just very recently purchased- it is separate for better dust control near the furnace.

I might note that a piece of aluminum plate one half inch thick and 20 x 20 inches square, drilled and tapped for the extension table legs, and fitted with the other adj. collar provides support for material pretty close to a good quality contractor style saw. If needed, in five minutes I can have another table with carriage fitted to the left of the powerhead.
The versatility is endless, as the original inventor intended!mt

[brown_hawk]

Keep in mind that you will always pay for high quality equipment if you use it much at all. Either by buying good quality once, or poor quality more than once.

Space is a consideration. Right now, half my basement is taken up in wood, for example. Where are you going to set up and run? What projects are you thinking about? Is ease of movement important?

An example is the rough cut wood I bought for my kitchen cabinets. To get it planed and four sided (sides parallel), I ended up moving the Pro Planer and the SS with the jointer up out of the basement and into the garage. That part of the job done, I moved them back so I can work in a little more comfort in the basement.

Quality stand alone tools are going to cost as well.

Charlese is correct. The conversion doesn't take that long, and knowing you are going to convert makes you plan out your work better, and that extends to design, set-up, and all the rest of project. Measure twice, cut once works for a lot of things besides cutting. Planning your work better usually means better finished projects.

The versitility of the SS helps your imagination as well. My first project was a coffee table, which ended up with turned columns, simply because of the presence of the lathe.

And keep in mind that your don't need all the accessories right now. Again, what are you planning on doing, and what accessories do you really need, as opposed to what you would like. Your major purchase has already been made. And with the power station, you already have a free standing band saw. And other tools as well.

And keep in mind that things like the Wixey Digital Angle Guage and similar items help make the setup faster and more accurate than ever before.

Hawk

[Nick]

Since the introduction of the Shopsmith to the woodworking market in 1948 and its subsequent popularity, there has been a seemingly endless debate over which is better, multipurpose tools or stand-alone, single-purpose tools. Those who advocate multipurpose tools point to their versatility, compact size, and the step-saving advantage of having everything you need to work within an arm’s reach. Those who would rather work with single-purpose tools argue that they require less setup time and a tool designed to do one thing well is preferable to one that does some things better than others.

There are, of course, advantages and disadvantages to both types of tools. And ultimately, the only part of this discussion that means a damn to people who are trying to decide which type of tool to buy is, “Which kind of tool produces the best work?” And the answer to that question is, “Neither.”

Currently, the cultural bias among woodworkers is in favor of stand-alone tools. But it’s only a bias, not a fact. If you know your woodworking history, the cultural scales once tipped in the other direction.

When I first began woodworking, I bought my lumber at an ancient lumberyard the proudly boasted it had been supplying building materials since just after the Civil War. In one area of this yard, there was a defunct millwork shop that had once built the windows and doors for most of the new construction in town. Instead of carpenters buying these commodities in standard sizes from a distant manufacturer as they do now, windows and doors were once made to order locally. The millwork shop employed eight craftsmen, and each craftsman had his own “millworking machine,” consisting of a jointer, planer, table saw, shaper, and mortiser arranged around a central arbor. A craftsman with a door or window to make could do so simply by walking around the machine – he needed nothing else.

These sorts of multipurpose machines were designed around our concept of manufacturing before the turn of the twentieth century. Manufactures had employed assembly lines and standardized parts since the 1820s, but craftsmen were still responsible for the construction of individual items. Often they would walk along the assembly line, progressing from station to station. Machines like the millworking machine that I described were designed to save steps and make this sort of manufacturing process more efficient.

In 1903, Henry Ford added a new wrinkle. Instead of craftsmen moving along a line, the line moved past the craftsmen. Each worker in the Ford automobile plant performed the same manufacturing step over and over. The tools used were single-purpose machines since each craftsman did only one job. There was a great deal of resistance to this kind of manufacturing at first. Nine out of every ten workers that Ford hired quit before they made it through their first year – it wasn’t the kind of craftsmanship they had been trained to perform. Ford, and other manufacturers who adopted his system, continually had to retrain their workforce.

This problem reached a head during World War I, when it became apparent that there would have to be some sort of new education process to train workers for mechanized farms and factories. The Smith-Hughes Act of 1917 set up the first “vocational” education programs. Naturally, these programs focused on the types of tools that the students would likely find in modern manufacturing environments – single-purpose tools. Professional-grade multipurpose and combination tools continued to be made for and used by an older generation of craftsmen well into the 1930s, but they became scarcer and scarcer in factories as younger workers trained in the new vocational system joined the workforce.

Today, almost everyone who has been trained to work with his or her hands professionally has learned on single-purpose tools and consequently there is a cultural bias that embraces them. We prefer the familiar; find rationalizations to convince ourselves that the unfamiliar can’t be as good. This is why “brand loyalty” is so important to marketers of cars, phones, and laundry detergents.

However, tools are unlike all other commodities in one important respect. Tools – and I use that term to also include things like video cameras, paint brushes, and potter’s wheels -- are extensions of our imagination. We use them to create things of our own design that add beauty and utility to our lives and the lives of others. This is craftsmanship – or what craftsmanship ought to be. Your choice of tools is important, but not essential. To prove my point there are thousands of examples of good craftsmanship that have been built with both stand-alone tools and multipurpose tools. And some of the best-crafted pieces of woodworking ever made were created with a few dozen hand tools that the makers could pack into a single trunk. See http://www.metmuseum.org/works_of_art/c ... tOd=1&vT=2 or http://www.winterthur.org/pdfs/American ... ns-web.pdf or http://www.artcomplex.org/shaker.html

Woodworkers and would-be woodworkers spend an enormous amount of energy arguing the merits of stand-alone versus multipurpose tools, and it boils down to much ado about nothing. In the end, your choice depends on your personal preferences and circumstances. And which way you swing is not an issue as long as you choose good, capable tools. I like working with this company because Shopsmith makes an entire system of good tools. Good tools make good craftsmanship easier. But they do not make good craftsmen.

With all good wishes,

[Ed in Tampa]

Nick
Most Excellent!!!!!!!!

That needed to be said a long long time ago! Thank you!
Ed

[dickg1]

Thank you Nick. My father was a skilled professional cabinetmaker. The only power tool he had in his shop was a pedal-powered jig saw. Everything else was done using hand tools. Cabinetmaking is an avocation for me. My tenure in the AF limited my ability for stand alone tools, so the Mark V became my tool of choice. I have never regreted that choice. My most gratifying moment came when, as my father was visiting, he reviewed the work on a cabinet I was making using the Mk V and said, "Richard, you should have been a cabinetmaker!"

Dickg1