Ed in Tampa wrote:Yeah I do need a fix of some hickory feed squirrels, been a long time.
I think what you described is probably the definition of most wood workers these days. Few if any will buy a new machine, especially one that costs nearly $4000 dollars. So in that line of thinking it would do Shopsmith little good to advertise. As for the SPT's many like the Bandsaw cost nearly what a stand alone machine does. In fact I was just looking at my latest issue of the Wood and they had an add for Grizzly anniversary bandsaws with all the bells and whistles. I think it was nearly the same cost as the Shopsmith Bandsaw.
Some are saying that is chinese junk but I think before long most of SS will be coming from China too.
Others say well I can still get parts. I have a 25 year old hand sander Porter Cable that I can still get all the parts for plus addon upgrades. I have a 40 year old Sears Radial Arm saw that I have never needed to buy a part for along with a Black and Decker drill, Sears Router, Sabre Saw and a 30 year old hitachi drill and I never needed any work on them. I have on Sear Sabre saw that needed a whole need from end, the recipocating section, I ordered it from Sears and installed it. Again no problem.
The problem is our society has the mind set of disposable, buy the cheapest no matter where is it made and look for the deals on Ebay and Craigslist.
Ya know Ed, on further reflection I must admit that you make a good point.
I should now confess that I have already, albeit inadvertently, hedged my bets on SS change-over time issues. Not by design, but by pure dumb luck, I acquired a SS jigsaw on a Power Stand, then a bandsaw on a Power Station, and then a Pro Planer. These were all serious bargains, and now I have almost more powered stands than I know what to do with. After considerable consideration, not to mention research on this forum, I think that I will ultimately put my belt sander on the Power Station, the bandsaw on the Power Stand, and mount the jigsaw on the SS in place of the jointer whenever needed. And for sure, everything gets a set of SS casters.
But from all this, I reckon SS got the standalone tool thing sorta covered, too, for those who want it that way. I gather that was an intentional market thrust of theirs some time back. And I still like the fact that I can shuffle all my SPT's around when and if the need arises, or the mood strikes.
On the "Chinese junk" front, the good news is that off-shoring phenomen is rapidly being superceded by the re-shoring phenomen. I know this first hand, as my company manufactures and sells machine tools for the high-volume production turned parts market, right here in the USA. The last decade was brutal. But now, the combination of moderated American wages, rising Chinese wages, poor Chinese quality, high shipping costs, and low U.S. energy costs have combined to turn things around. Our customers tell us that they can now produce volume parts in the U.S. more competitively than in China. We literally can't make machines for US manufacturers fast enough this year. WOW, THAT FEELS GOOD!!!
And don't even try to make me feel guilty about buying from eBay or Craigslist. If you buy into the environmental movement even just a little bit, what could be more "green" than recycling used machinery, instead of making a huge carbon footprint manufacturing new stuff, while perfectly good used equipment goes to waste? The digital age and Internet make "recycling" used machinery very efficient. Not to mention that hunting, and occasionally scoring, bargains is way more fun than paying full retail!
