Shopsmith Forums

I scored a 1993 jointer on ebay for just $100. It has some rust on the table but no apparent pitting. I have been using naval jelly and elbow grease to get rid of it as I saw Nick do. I also have some of those pads he recommended for removing the stains. It is doing a pretty good job, although not as easy as it seemed on his video! However, I just can't get that shiny polished look. Any suggestions?!

I have a manual on order. It looks like it has all the parts, but it needs new knives, there is serious nick on all 3 at same spot. I am sort of dreading the whole alignment thingy!!:eek:

I have a manual on order. It looks like it has all the parts, but it needs new knives, there is serious nick on all 3 at same spot. I am sort of dreading the whole alignment thingy!!

stryker1313, I don't have a Shopsmith jointer, but this works on mine. If the nicks aren't too wide and the blades are otherwise ok you can still use them. Just offset each blade to the right or left, just a tad, so the nicks aren't aligned and it should work fine.

Don't dread the alignment procedure. It is not all that bad. A bit tedious the first time but after that a blade change and adjustment is less than a 1 hour task.

Relacement jointer blades (505640) are about $36.00. But don't discard the old ones. They can be resharpened unless those nicks are really bad gouges. Even then they might be correctible.

I would suggest that you invest in the Planer/Jointer Knife Sharpener (555471) and the Conical Sanding Disk (555435). With these you can sharpen your own blades in just a matter of minutes.

The conical disk will come in handy for many other sanding tasks.

Dusty is correct. The sharpening jig and the conical sander is good for resharpening. Be sure to check the height after sharpening. They can only be sharpened so often, but if you take care they don't have to be sharpened very often. Honing will be good enough to keep them sharp. Make sure you set a good straight edge across both tables and that they align. Also the grain direction when feeding is important.

To shine up the castings try some metal polish. The auto parts stores will have several of these, Mother's brand comes to mind. You may have to work at polishing the surfaces by hand or if you have a polishing machine for waxing cars it will speed things up.

While having some welding done this past fall on a broken Shopsmith Table tie bar, the welder asked me if I would be interested in an old Delta-Rockwell contractor's table saw he had that he just wanted to get rid of. He thought it needed some motor repair and said it was "all rusty". It turned out that the motor needed some easily repaired new wires from the power cord motor terminal to the armature wire terminal. I then tackled the rusty table top. Naval jelly took off the worst of the rust but what restored the shine was attaching a fine wire brush to a hand held grinder and buffing the top with Johnson's Paste Wax. There will always be some minor surface pitting on the cast iron tables but the surface is slick as ice when running wood through the saw blade. I wish I had taken before and after pictures because I cannot believe what a difference there is.
I then used this same approach to clean up a Shopsmith jointer table that had surface rust and can tell you that it worked equally as well. Both the table saw table and jointer table reflect sunlight off their surfaces that hurts your eyes to stare at them.
Sarge

Thanks everyone for the replies! Sarge, I tried you method since I had the brush on hand. You are right, amazing difference!! My elbows thank you, lol!