Shopsmith Forums

If we are talking about the documentation provided to the buyer at the time of sale of a NEW machine, then I wholeheartedly agree with nearly all of the comments made in this thread thus far.

But I believe most of the discontent is from users who are not happy with the documentation that they have/want/need for equipment purchased from other than Shopsmith or for equipment that has never been manufactured by Shopsmith.

Example: I believe Shopsmith has NO OBLIGATION to maintain pristine master copies for equipment manufactured by Magna Engineering or Yuba.

I also believe that if you are a user who purchased documentation from Shopsmith that was "not acceptable" and yet you accepted it without complaining to Shopsmith and without returning it to them for a full refund you are your own worst enemy. We, here on the forum, are not the ones who should be grieving with you.

Just like the guy who lost his fingers in a table saw incident and sued because the saw wasn't equipped with a SawStop. We all, I think, pretty much agreed that the operator was at fault and should not have been awarded 1.4 million dollars for his stupidity.

You, as a consumer, have some responsibility too. Let us NOT lay off our personal shortcomings on someone else. Accept "responsibility" when you are responsible.

BTW - if you read the forum regularly you, like I, will find that nearly all of us feel that Shopsmith Customer Service does just that. They bend over backwards to accept responsibility and to correct the errors they have made.

Going with Dusty on the difference between now product and items that SS did not sell to start with or no longer provide. If this was something I just purchased and they still offer it then yes I want a nice clean new manual. Not really even a copy unless I cannot tell the difference. But like manuals for items like the ER's and some Magna produced items. YOu get what you get. I am surprise they even tried to keep copies for you to find. Most of this is out of copyright time and is available from others or on other groups in the files. If nothing else find one on ebay if you don't want a copy but be careful there is a on seller that is only selling copies and states so on her site. They are good copies but still copies. I thinks SS does a great job of customer service and has helped me and even bent over backwards to make sure I was happy.They have even sent me small items free of charge to make sure I was happy with my 520. How may other companies will do that. Dewalt did not offer to send me a free safety switch when mine broke. IN fact they made me wait two weeks and charged me $4.95. So lets hope SS holds on during all of these hard times and we seen new improvements that will help us enjoy our machines more everyday. Love this group so let's make some sawdust and enjoy our machines and each other.

dusty wrote:Example: I believe Shopsmith has NO OBLIGATION to maintain pristine master copies for equipment manufactured by Magna Engineering or Yuba.

But if they are going to sell one, it should at least be readable.

Or if they would just let the customer know up front that it's a photocopy, then I don't think there would be a problem. A simple disclaimer such as "Original manuals for this product were last printed fifty years ago and have been long out of print. At this time we only offer photocopies of the original manual."

Then when somebody buys a manual, and they receive a photocopy, it's not a shock. They knew up front and won't be expecting a high quality manual on thick glossy paper with photographic quality images.

Couldn't agree more Francis. When I worked in other peoples' shipyards the rule was "the yard supplies the power tools and the workers supply their own hand tools". I carried the same rule to my yard when I opened it. I don't think I would trust any "professional" who didn't want to use his own tools. There are hammers and there are hammers. Everyone has preferences in weight, balance and feel and there's something comfortable about your own. There's a way you sharpen your hand planes and chisels that suits the way you use them. There's the smile that comes to your face when you take out your side cutters and remember the way those two little notches in the jaws came about.(cutting off a drill cord before unplugging it) If you use your tools every day you get a relationship going with them and the last things you want are a) to let anyone else (ab)use them and b) to use foreign, unfamiliar ones. So I wouldn't want someone who borrowed tools working for me because if he doesn't care enough to relate to his tools he probably doesn't care enough to do his best work for me (or likely his best isn't very good).

So GOOD POINT FRANCIS.

Paul M

FWIW many of the older manuals were not copyrighted to begin with!