Shopsmith Forums

Hello all,

Yesterday I was working on drilling holes for a couple of cornice box covers over my curtains in the living room. The quill on my old machine (Mark V 70s) was just not playing nice. It wouldn't retract at all unless I forced it to.

Having watched the sawdust sessions, I knew how to take out the quill, lubricate it, clean the teeth, retension it, and put it back together. The issue became retensioning. I can turn the handled either way a hundred times and nothing happens. My new Mark V pro works just fine with retensioning so I do know what it should do.

I believe my issue is in the spring. The question is, how hard is that to fix, how expensive, and is it worth it or should I just make this one into my drive system for my bandsaw/sander etc.

Any insight would help.

Yeah, definitely sounds like the spring. I think you'll just have to take it apart for inspection to get a better idea of your options.

Hopefully, the spring just came unhooked from the quill feed pinion and you can re-hook it without completely removing the spring from the housing (but you'll still need to remove the quill feed pinion to have a look at it). But the spring might have broken, or the pin the spring hooks to might have broken off the quill feed pinion (less likely, I think).

I've only completely removed the spring on my 10ER and I didn't have too much trouble reinstalling it. I have not removed the spring on my Mark 5, but I can't imagine it being much different or much more difficult to reinstall. Some people seem to have a lot of trouble reinstalling the spring, and if I were to do it again I might too. Maybe I just got lucky.

The spring on a 500 is a pain to put back in properly. You better have some strong hands and forearms. The spring on the last one I bought had come off. Wasn't broke just kept coming off of the pin and I couldn't rehook it without taking the spring out of the housing. Took me four different tries to get it hooked and wind it down enough to put in back into the housing. The third time I did it I found out I had put it in backwards!! Then I had to make sure that I kept tension on it the entire time until I could put it together and put the quill back into the headstock. It works just fine now. But I know if I ever let all the tension off of the spring it will come off the pin again. It is doable but it is a chore. Obviously you other choice is just to buy the entire spring/housing unit and replace it.

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DT aka Agent Orange is a POS
Liar Liar his wonky comb over is on fire

spiderclimber wrote:Hello all,

Yesterday I was working on drilling holes for a couple of cornice box covers over my curtains in the living room. The quill on my old machine (Mark V 70s) was just not playing nice. It wouldn't retract at all unless I forced it to.

Having watched the sawdust sessions, I knew how to take out the quill, lubricate it, clean the teeth, retension it, and put it back together. The issue became retensioning. I can turn the handled either way a hundred times and nothing happens. My new Mark V pro works just fine with retensioning so I do know what it should do.

I believe my issue is in the spring. The question is, how hard is that to fix, how expensive, and is it worth it or should I just make this one into my drive system for my bandsaw/sander etc.

Any insight would help.

The spring has most likely come unhooked. Furthermore, you most unlikely allowed that to happen when you removed the quill. Rewatch the videos and stay attuned to the procedure. If you keed pressure on the quill return spring, it is much less likely to come unhooked.

Recovering is not "hard"; it just requires a "maximum of patience".:D

I will have to tear it apart tonight and inspect it. At least if it is broke, a whole new quill spring assembly is only 30 dollars or so.

Here are a couple of videos you might find useful.
Shopsmith Quill Spring
Attaching Shopsmith Quill Spring