I have to start this thread by saying my wife is the greatest woman in the world!:D I went to look at this craigslist item to see how bad the rust was from being stored in a barn for a couple of years, as advertised. The only other thing it really said is that it was Shop smith equipment and had a picture with a bunch of boxes that you couldn’t tell what was in them. Got there and the guy says it was his brother-in-laws equipment and that it was stored in a barn after his death a few years ago. Now that he was downsizing homes and all, some “stuff” had to go. He had used the band saw a few times but was no woodworker like his brother-in-law. I talked to him for a little, he ran it briefly to show it worked and I gave him what he was asking, which he had dropped $50.00 from the posting earlier in the week. I still hadn’t seen what all was in the boxes except for the obvious lathe chisels and saw blades. Everything was covered in about 1/8 inch dust, so I figure it was stored in a pole barn with a dirt floor. My daughter and I spent yesterday afternoon and this morning pulling everything out of the boxes and dusting everything off and it was like panning for gold. What rust there was is all on the surface and nothing was locked up tight. Every time we pulled something out, there was another little gem under it. A lot of the items don’t even look like they were used.
And why is my wife the greatest woman in the world? Just two weeks ago she let me spend a chunk of money on a speed changer for my 10ER.
Shopsmith bug bites again
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Congrats! That is the first Joint Matic I've ever seen. It's amazing what deals can be had. Most of the 11 Shopsmiths I purchase for $50 to $150. Got a 1955 Greenie for free. Why? Someone had stripped the speed control which is easy to do. I have 3 spares which a guy on Ebay machined and replaced the potted metal with a steel gear. I can't wait to restore it.
One Greenie, Two Mark 7s,Three 510s and much more…
I did't get it for $50.00, if thats what anyone is thinking, he lowered it 50 to $450, and for everything that came with it it was worth it.Some of the things that were brand new, looks like they were never used: Tenon Master jig, 2 of the 4 dado blades, Robert Sorby 3/8 corner chisel, a safe - t - planer, the bisket joiner, the maxi-clamps, the self study course, I dont even know if he used the 4" joiner. Going through it today ther was zero wood or even wood dust in the cavities and the blades had no nicks. The lathe tools had the original grind and bur under the protective tips. I'm thinking I got a great deal on just the basic unit not to mention the joint matic which (came with a porter cable 690)and all the other odds and ends. There was even a stack of Woodsmith mags 25-107.
Paul B
Well, $50 or $450, you got a great deal! There are some people looking to recover whatever they spent over the years or what they see new Shopsmiths selling for on the Shopsmith web site. There are some who don't realize what they have. The first 10ER I purchased for far more than $50- maybe $250 because the seller who originally purchased the 10ER in 1952 makes toys for children in hospitals on a Mark V he also has. I know every dollar went to those kids whom he builds simple toys for. He is also the best carver I've ever met. The funny thing is he didn't start carving until he was 65 and had retired & moved from Long Island, NY to Florida. He's into his 90's now and has a home full of his carvings.
I still look at Shopsmiths on Craigslist and am not interested in buying anymore unless it is something special- very special. I try to encourage people to keep them or pass them to a family member if they have if they don't know what they have. Then there are other people who don't advertise the other things they have and the person buying can make out really well like a lottery winner like you have. When I hear the Shopsmith will be thrown out or taken to salvage, I will offer what they might get from the salvage yard-especially if the unit is not a rust bucket. A person has many choices in headstock rebuilding/restoration: Shopsmith in Ohio, Jacob Andersen in VA, Bill Mayo in FL, and others I'm sure- or maybe yourself if you are so inclined.
I try to encouraging other woodworkers to consider buying/trying a used Shopsmith when I hear a person is going to purchase far more expensive items tools which have to be new. Buying new tools is like purchasing a new car- costly, especially when there are so many good used tools for sale. But people get tunnel vision. I've also seen a few Shopsmiths that were purchased, maybe assembled and never used. Back in the mid 80's, my father got the Shopsmith fever after seeing a demo at a mall up in CT. He got it bad and ended up ordering virtually everything, including a stand-alone planer. I was in the service then & while home on leave, I put it all together for him. I used it & was disappointed with the routing function. I built a small desk for my daughter in not much time at all. I got hooked.
The new DVR motor has made it "worse" as its constant torque and speed range make it serious wood working tool without the problems with the AC motor like blowing circuit breakers or bogging down under a heavy load which many complained about. This motor will make almost all the short comings of the Shopsmith something of the past IMHO.
Well good luck with your great fortune. It's addictive. I just went to a demo on Friday & my stars must of all been aligned. The DIY PowerPro upgrade was only $1286- ouch! Being a retired service person, Lowes took 10% off & then had a special no-interest for 18 months special. I had no intention of buying anything. But like the sirens of mythology, I was lured in...
My wife has also become a member of the greatest women in the world club since a renovation project of our home is almost completed to where we can furnish the upstairs bedrooms with furniture after almost 4 years of living with an upstairs that had no sheetrock or doors. She had wanted me to make a closet off the master bedroom by building over the garage. Well, I studied it and figured, why not use the entire space and have a much larger master bedroom?
I thought I could add 3 feet to the rear of the garage to even the garage with the back of the house and....figured 3 feet or 18 feet- what's the difference? So a 14 x 28 bedroom was built on top and a large addition added to the rear of the garage for my Shopsmith work shop. I'm sure I've written about it before. The shop is going to actually become a shop & no longer a furniture storage room anymore!
It's taken a long time, but during this time we've made some other improvements like central vacuuming, removal of the copper pipe & using PEX via a manifold, an ERV (energy recovery ventilator) which acts as a central exhaust for all the bathrooms, kitchen and the new upstairs laundry room and brings in fresh air that is either pre-cooled or pre-heated. Replacement of the entire HVAC system and 50-year old & undersized duct system, air sealing with closed-cell foam so our walls are R-30 and under the roof sheathing its around R-50. The old duct system had an inch or more of dust that was matted & causing my wife to cough all the time. The attic no longer gets sweltering hot- maybe 6-10 degrees about the upper floor temp.
My wife insisted she have a shower, so being a person who remembers Green Acres as a kid, I took some 2 x4's & 2 x 3's and built a frame a top a 30" Home Depot shower pan that was on sale for $30. Bada bing, bada bang...a little plastic and a staple gun & voila! A Green Acres or red neck shower. <cue: Green Acres theme music...> She is understanding, but gave me till the end of this May to have the place done or she was leaving. I ended up getting some help from a brother-in-law who in 8 days over 3 weeks, they hung all the doors, built extension jambs with window sills for all the new construction Andersen windows, and much more. The first Shopsmith I restore I will give to him.
We now have 3 full bathrooms with 2 showers and a whirlpool tub. The HVAC system has 5 returns instead of only one and is properly sized. I had a geothermal heat pump connected to 1200 feet of special pipe in two 300 foot vertical wells. Everything is powered by a 25' x 43' solar power panel system. So no more electric bill with using a high-efficiency heat pumps and all LED lighting. The cost? Expensive, but NJ offered some huge rebates along with the current federal tax credit of 30% applies to the entire cost of each energy saving project.
Well there you go. All of this was driven by my desire for a wood shop- err my wife's closet (right...)! I even ran a 100 amp sub-panel into the garage so I would have separate 20 amp breakers for every outlet so I could run a Shopsmith & turn on a Shop Vac without popping a circuit breaker. Having no walls made running a 'structured wiring' system easy which runs to two locations in every room for cable, Cat 6, Cat 5, and sound with speakers in every ceiling. Being a retired radar engineer, I'm not a fan of wireless anything. Home Depot would sometimes have yellow tag sales to get rid of a no/slow moving products. So I got expensive speakers for $29 a pair minus 10% for having a military ID card. Having nothing but time has played to our advantage in being able to save a lot of money along with my doing the plumbing and electrical work.
So that is all the ultimate result of my father giving me his 510 back in 1992 when my parents retired to Florida. I upgraded it to a 520 and then after 2007, I got the bug bad and think I can count on my fingers the things Shopsmith made that I don't have. I need to restore all of my Shopsmiths. I will have all new headstocks as I bought 3 entire sets of internal parts for headstocks and will end up with two DVR-powered headstocks as well- my keepers which will be Mark 7s, the Greenie and one 10E & one 10ER. That's enough! It will be fun. I hate to sell the Shopsmiths in pieces...just doesn't seem right. Will see.
I still look at Shopsmiths on Craigslist and am not interested in buying anymore unless it is something special- very special. I try to encourage people to keep them or pass them to a family member if they have if they don't know what they have. Then there are other people who don't advertise the other things they have and the person buying can make out really well like a lottery winner like you have. When I hear the Shopsmith will be thrown out or taken to salvage, I will offer what they might get from the salvage yard-especially if the unit is not a rust bucket. A person has many choices in headstock rebuilding/restoration: Shopsmith in Ohio, Jacob Andersen in VA, Bill Mayo in FL, and others I'm sure- or maybe yourself if you are so inclined.
I try to encouraging other woodworkers to consider buying/trying a used Shopsmith when I hear a person is going to purchase far more expensive items tools which have to be new. Buying new tools is like purchasing a new car- costly, especially when there are so many good used tools for sale. But people get tunnel vision. I've also seen a few Shopsmiths that were purchased, maybe assembled and never used. Back in the mid 80's, my father got the Shopsmith fever after seeing a demo at a mall up in CT. He got it bad and ended up ordering virtually everything, including a stand-alone planer. I was in the service then & while home on leave, I put it all together for him. I used it & was disappointed with the routing function. I built a small desk for my daughter in not much time at all. I got hooked.
The new DVR motor has made it "worse" as its constant torque and speed range make it serious wood working tool without the problems with the AC motor like blowing circuit breakers or bogging down under a heavy load which many complained about. This motor will make almost all the short comings of the Shopsmith something of the past IMHO.
Well good luck with your great fortune. It's addictive. I just went to a demo on Friday & my stars must of all been aligned. The DIY PowerPro upgrade was only $1286- ouch! Being a retired service person, Lowes took 10% off & then had a special no-interest for 18 months special. I had no intention of buying anything. But like the sirens of mythology, I was lured in...
My wife has also become a member of the greatest women in the world club since a renovation project of our home is almost completed to where we can furnish the upstairs bedrooms with furniture after almost 4 years of living with an upstairs that had no sheetrock or doors. She had wanted me to make a closet off the master bedroom by building over the garage. Well, I studied it and figured, why not use the entire space and have a much larger master bedroom?
I thought I could add 3 feet to the rear of the garage to even the garage with the back of the house and....figured 3 feet or 18 feet- what's the difference? So a 14 x 28 bedroom was built on top and a large addition added to the rear of the garage for my Shopsmith work shop. I'm sure I've written about it before. The shop is going to actually become a shop & no longer a furniture storage room anymore!
It's taken a long time, but during this time we've made some other improvements like central vacuuming, removal of the copper pipe & using PEX via a manifold, an ERV (energy recovery ventilator) which acts as a central exhaust for all the bathrooms, kitchen and the new upstairs laundry room and brings in fresh air that is either pre-cooled or pre-heated. Replacement of the entire HVAC system and 50-year old & undersized duct system, air sealing with closed-cell foam so our walls are R-30 and under the roof sheathing its around R-50. The old duct system had an inch or more of dust that was matted & causing my wife to cough all the time. The attic no longer gets sweltering hot- maybe 6-10 degrees about the upper floor temp.
My wife insisted she have a shower, so being a person who remembers Green Acres as a kid, I took some 2 x4's & 2 x 3's and built a frame a top a 30" Home Depot shower pan that was on sale for $30. Bada bing, bada bang...a little plastic and a staple gun & voila! A Green Acres or red neck shower. <cue: Green Acres theme music...> She is understanding, but gave me till the end of this May to have the place done or she was leaving. I ended up getting some help from a brother-in-law who in 8 days over 3 weeks, they hung all the doors, built extension jambs with window sills for all the new construction Andersen windows, and much more. The first Shopsmith I restore I will give to him.
We now have 3 full bathrooms with 2 showers and a whirlpool tub. The HVAC system has 5 returns instead of only one and is properly sized. I had a geothermal heat pump connected to 1200 feet of special pipe in two 300 foot vertical wells. Everything is powered by a 25' x 43' solar power panel system. So no more electric bill with using a high-efficiency heat pumps and all LED lighting. The cost? Expensive, but NJ offered some huge rebates along with the current federal tax credit of 30% applies to the entire cost of each energy saving project.
Well there you go. All of this was driven by my desire for a wood shop- err my wife's closet (right...)! I even ran a 100 amp sub-panel into the garage so I would have separate 20 amp breakers for every outlet so I could run a Shopsmith & turn on a Shop Vac without popping a circuit breaker. Having no walls made running a 'structured wiring' system easy which runs to two locations in every room for cable, Cat 6, Cat 5, and sound with speakers in every ceiling. Being a retired radar engineer, I'm not a fan of wireless anything. Home Depot would sometimes have yellow tag sales to get rid of a no/slow moving products. So I got expensive speakers for $29 a pair minus 10% for having a military ID card. Having nothing but time has played to our advantage in being able to save a lot of money along with my doing the plumbing and electrical work.
So that is all the ultimate result of my father giving me his 510 back in 1992 when my parents retired to Florida. I upgraded it to a 520 and then after 2007, I got the bug bad and think I can count on my fingers the things Shopsmith made that I don't have. I need to restore all of my Shopsmiths. I will have all new headstocks as I bought 3 entire sets of internal parts for headstocks and will end up with two DVR-powered headstocks as well- my keepers which will be Mark 7s, the Greenie and one 10E & one 10ER. That's enough! It will be fun. I hate to sell the Shopsmiths in pieces...just doesn't seem right. Will see.
One Greenie, Two Mark 7s,Three 510s and much more…