Getting Owner's Manuals and other documentation.

[chapmanruss]

Checking ebay this morning I see dozens of printed copies (not originals) of manuals listed for sale. Sorry to those sellers but I don't recommend buying printed copies of Shopsmith Manuals from them. In almost all cases, if not all, they can be found somewhere for free as a PDF and downloaded. Many are available from Shopsmith here on the website under Learn and Manuals and Instructions. Most of those are downloadable PDFs. A few are only for purchase of a printed Manual. Other older documents can be found through the Topic near the top of the Maintenance and Repair section of the Forum under the title Shopsmith Large Format Drawings, Illustrations and more by Everett Davis. A link to that is below. In the first posting is a link to Everett's My Google Drive which will take you to a listing of Shopsmith tools and related items which have Manuals and other documents under those headings. Everett has restored many manuals and documents which he has made available to us.

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There are other sources for older manuals that you can download free of charge.

With all this available why pay for printed copies many of which come from these same sources.

Another reason I don't like the online sellers is some of the manuals violate copyright laws and should not be supported. Although Shopsmith makes many of their Manuals and Instruction sheets available to us, reselling them for profit can be a violation.

None of this is to say if you want an original printed Manual do seek it out, just don't waste your money buying copies. If you have trouble locating a specific Manual or Documation not found on the Shopsmith website or Everett's Google Drive, ask and hopefully someone here can guide you to it.

Now it's time to get off my soapbox about this again.