Owners weekend update

[cincinnati]

I had the opportunity to attend the Owners weekend at the Shopsmith Factory today (Saturday) Great to be able to put faces to the names here on the forum. Also great to meet Nick and Drew. The factory tour was a must see for a true Shopsmith believer like myself. There is absolutely no question that the Shopsmith is American made. In fact ,I was surprised that so much was machined there and not farmed out to other sources.

Here are just a coulple of pic's for the owners that were not able to make it. Nick was snaping a few during the factury tour so maybe he will post a few.

Thanks Nick and Drew for a great day in the shop.

Below is Drew on the Alaskan saw mill demo. Nick is trying out a a bike powered wood lathe.

[fixit]

Cincinnati,

Thanks for the update. It's nice to hear that the weekend activities are a hit! Unfortunately, I can't make it this year but next year should be different if they continue these get togethers.

I made three of the weekends in past years and everyone had a great time and learned a lot.

Thanks again for the update.

[Ed in Tampa]

I hope we get more reports. I would love to have details for those of us that simply couldn't make it.
Ed

[nuhobby]

I rode in for a few hours of Saturday visiting. SUPER TIME !!!

- Ohio gasoline is "magic." My Buick got 25 mpg on Indiana gas and 35 mpg on Ohio gas.
- Got to see the actual stature of Nick Engler. All I knew before was that he was somewhere between a YouTube frame size and a projection-TV frame size.
- Also Drew A., doing all duties from running errands to giving presentations, and Jim McCann giving factory tours and presentations.
- Dozens of meticulous, polite Shopsmith owners (30 more or less the time I was there). Several of the Forum members on hand.
- Very sincere and thoughtful subject-treatment on Africa, as spoken during the bicycle-lathe demo's: see http://www.kenyamaasai.org/ .
- Handled some stuff I'd never touched before, feeling the actual heft of a 520 table fence for example.
- Other ingenious gadgets on the floor, such as 2 Mark V drill-presses "siamesed" into one machine.
- COOL COOL COOL factory tour. Got to see the eternal 10E[r] drilling/tapping machines, up to modern CNC machines. Rock-solid assembly fixtures guaranteeing perfect table alignments. QC room with a couple of 8-inch-thick dead flat granite reference tables.
- All visitor-center items (such as the ubiquitous wood rocking horse) much more impressive in person than they are in small photos.
- Dayton Air Show was also going on. Drove by when leaving for the afternoon, saw a grayish military transport plane on an overcast sky, looking like a phantom ship, flying almost too slow to believe.
- Had Skyline Chili for the first time in about 10 years. This is the Ohio specialty of spaghetti with chili, onion, cheese on it. You've got to wear a bib when eating it.

I wasn't there for long but it was a real "battery recharge" for me!

[brown_hawk]

Well, since Cincinnati refused to mention that I was the guy on the bike, I'm going to take my marbles and go home.

It's been a pretty good weekend. I didn't get there until Fri about noon, but it has been informative. Got to talk to a lot of owners.

Cinci and I talked for a while with a gentleman who does a LOT of beautiful scroll saw work.

Bill was giving seminars on rebuilding Shopsmiths whenever anyone asked.

8iowa and I and his son spent some time on the sand flea. 8iowa, who has a SLOW connection in the UP plus a major virus, which is why he hasn't been on a lot lately, and I spent a lot of time talking about shop setups and workbenches. He and I also discussed the major downside of the weekend, which was that none of the Folkerths even showed up to say hi.

Nick and Drew were great. Jim McCann did the tours, and also a seminar on scrapers. They are probably going to be sleeping for a week because they put in a lot of time and energy. They were always willing to answer questions, go into explanations, and all that kind of thing. One other gentleman, whose name I didn't catch, was helping with the clocks, but was also more than willing to talk, demonstrate tools, and make us feel at home.

A couple of guys were finishing up their clocks from last week, so we got to see those in the finishing stages, which was nice.

I'll be going back today for the final day, so I'll post more on it when I get some time.

Oh, yeah! The bicycle. Actually, it was a lot of fun. The lathe had a flywheel which was there to help keep the speed steady. So once you got it up to speed, it almost pedaled you. Since it is a prototype, there were a few glitches, but it was fun, and everyone had a good time, and some suggestions for improvement. I'll try to post more on the whys of the bicycle power if someone doesn't beat me to it.

Hawk

[horologist]

Dad and I had a great time but unfortunately I had to skip Sunday.

If someone sees this in time they might tell the two Bills that they definitely want to take the beltway around Atlanta.

Time to finish unloading the car...

Troy

[psf513]

Just got home from Dayton. Had a great time Friday and Saturday. I will second everything said above. For someone like me who is new to Shopsmith, this was a weekend worth its weight in gold. Now if I can just turn a couple of ideas to reality, it will be even more worthwhile.

[brown_hawk]

Okay, third day report.

Not as many people today, and it looked like it was only going to be 5 or 6 people, but more trickled in and we ended up with about 20 overall. One father and daughter who just came for the tour - they wanted to see how it was built, and were impressed. Another three men who are looking to redo some houses and wanted to see and talk to owners. Some others who are taking next week's class and came in early. Overall, we had a good number of people show up who hadn't been here the first two days.

It was a good day. There were two seminars scheduled, but Nick threw in a third on the ringmaster just before the tour. The other two were on air drying wood by Nick, and building cabriole legs by Jim McCann. All three were very good, and well worth the time.

Good time talking and learning what people are doing. We had some good feed back on the sawdust session. I talked to one man who's had his SS unused for several years, who got motivated by watching the sessions. Some other people also mentioned them and how they were both helpful and motivating.

I had a great time, and learned a lot. It was nice meeting some of you like Jimbo, nuhobby, Bill, 8iowa and his family and other from the forum.

Nick is hoping that we can repeat this next year, but I'll let him go into that. He's probably asleep now as he was constantly going this weekend, and has the tool chest class next week.

Hawk

[brown_hawk]

As promised, here are the bicycle lathe pictures. (Without me on the bike:) )

This is designed to be built locally in Africa, so that they can start building the tools they need. Since most of the countries don't have power, etc., they need to have tools that this country was using about the time of the revolution. Since bikes are common there, this is designed to use the bikes to provide power. With this kind of tool, they can build spinning wheels and looms and turn cotton and wool into products that will bring more money than just the raw wool or cotton.

nuhobby gave the web site, which I haven't had a chance to look at. But the whole idea is to help them build tools which will help bring them from where they are into the 21st century. A hand up, not a hand out. And the pride of building and doing it themselves.

Hawk

[audir10]

I agree with all my fellow attendees, the weekend was a winner. I got more ideas from wandering around the academy and talking with everyone than I
ever expected. A big thanks to Nick, Drew (stand up comedian) and the
company for putting this on. Worth every dollar I spent and mile I drove.
A Buick getting 35mpg must have a refinery in the trunk. Lets do it again
sometime.