Here's something I've been building for the Shopsmith community:
https://shopsmithsonian.com/
I picked up my first Shopsmith back in May (this one), having only learned that Shopsmiths even existed a couple of days earlier.
Being in Australia, I knew I was going to have to learn everything I could about it if I wanted to restore it properly. My machine was 44 years old, and I'd like to get many more decades out of it.
It turned out to be quite the introduction. The original inspection putty was still intact, so the headstock appeared never to have been opened or maintained. It also has the less common 230V/50Hz motor. Along the way I managed to run into nearly every problem you can: both sets of sheaves needed replacing, almost all the bearings were crunchy, the switch was dead, a previous owner had redrilled and tapped a few things (to my horror), and even the motor had to come apart. It got the full works.
Thankfully, between Jacob Anderson's rebuild videos, Scott Markwood's My Growth Rings channel, Everett Davis's enormous collection of restored documents, and years of posts from people on this forum, I was able to cobble together an understanding piece by piece.
The information was there, but it was often spread across old manuals, exploded drawings, forum threads, videos and parts pages. For a while now I've wanted to build something that might make that first climb a little easier for the next person.
ShopSmithsonian isn't quite the beginner's guide I originally imagined. It has instead become what I kept wishing I had while working on my own machine: a visual reference where you can find a drawing, identify the part in front of you, and follow it into the manuals, forum discussions and the parts information we still have.
At the moment it contains:
- 186 interactive exploded drawings covering Shopsmith and Magna machines and accessories
- 6,250 indexed parts, searchable by part number or description
- 3,366 source-verified notes drawn from manuals, forum posts, videos and other references
- 349 linked documents, including the source manuals and additional repair and reference material
- Pan and zoom on each drawing, with the matching parts list alongside it
- Current availability and a direct link where a part is still listed by Shopsmith
- Links back to the source manuals, so the drawing never loses its context
- Cross-references showing where the same part appears in other drawings
- Click share to copy a direct link to any specific part
- It also works really nicely on phones and tablets
This would not have been possible without the people who scanned and preserved the original literature, the members here who have spent years answering the same questions for each new generation of owners, and the wider community that keeps these old machines alive. A huge amount of the underlying knowledge came directly or indirectly from this forum.
It is still a work in progress. There will be mistakes, missing drawings and part descriptions that could be clearer. If you find something wrong, or have a manual or exploded drawing that isn't represented, please sing out. I'd much rather correct it than let a bad bit of information sit there.
I didn't actually set out to build this. I only wanted a better way to find an exploded diagram when I needed one. Then I wanted to search all the parts. Then I realised I could reverse-engineer the parts lists into a kind of database and connect the same part across different drawings. After that I realised I could attach the useful notes, forum discussions and documents to each individual part. It just kept snowballing from there.
If you have any diagrams I'm missing or feature suggestions plesae send them my way.
Have a play with it and let me know what you think.
ShopSmithsonian - Shopsmith Exploded Diagrams and Parts Reference
Maurice
ShopSmithsonian is an independent community project and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Shopsmith.
