Shopsmith Forums

Hi all.

I know from a pinned post that sharing a link in which the poster has a financial interest is not acceptable. To be clear up front, I am not posting that I have something for sale... The subtle differentiation I am making is that I have no idea how to sell a Shopsmith and all its accessories.

My father passed away in October 2015. Amongst the great many possessions my mother and I have to figure out how to unload is a Shopsmith (Mark V, I think?) and an enormous amount of accessories (I'm figuring there are maybe 200+ individual pieces beyond the main unit).

As someone who knows next to nothing about a Shopsmith, or has forgotten what I did know from when I worked with my father in the basement as a kid, I am at a total loss of how to catalog the various pieces, identify them, and determine what a reasonable way of selling things is (Everything together? a la carte? Dividing into a few large buckets?).

Any advice on this front would be greatly appreciated. If this is still too close to the "can't have financial interest," I understand.

Thank you for any help anyone can provide.

Regards,

cjg

For the forum to be of much help it will be almost essential that you post some pictures.

Some of the equipment will have part numbers and serial numbers. If you post those there will bge help.

Where are you located? You might be close enough to another member to get real live assistance.

Nice new avatar Dusty!

The simple way would be if someone who knows the equipment could just look at it and tell you what is what. If you were near enough I'd be willing to do so and perhaps others would too. If you are willing to put a town and state out there you could see what happens.

The other way is to learn to post pictures here and have us look at them but sometimes conditions or missing parts are hard to tell from pictures as is condition. A part might look pretty but in actually be worn out.

I'm guessing you are not now interesting in learning the ways of the shopsmith? There are a lot of aspects to woodworking and the shopsmith offers a good collection of add on tools to accomplish them besides the normal 5 functions. You don't get much for used shopsmith equipment so sometimes it is better to just get some use out of it.

Ed

Thanks for the quick replies already.

I'm in eastern Pennsylvania. I figure I'll have to take pictures of everything, but I haven't done that yet. I've pooled as many of the accessories and related items together as I can find right now. I'm sure there are more, smaller pieces all over the place, but I have a few boxes of things together just to centralize them. I know my father went a bit crazy with the Shopsmith in terms of buying accessories since he viewed it as so useful. He made several pieces of furniture heavily using it. If not for my awful memory, I'd be 100% confident that he made my crib from when I was an infant using the Shopsmith... so there's a bit of an emotional connection I have with it. I vaguely remember using it a few times when I was a kid, as I spent an inordinate amount of time in the basement learning how to use tools under his watchful eye. Over the years, lack of practice means I basically lack those skills now. Plus, my lifestyle and where I live doesn't lend itself to having a Shopsmith around. I need a small self-storage place as it is for all my tools I've collected over the years. Maybe if I had an interest in relearning woodworking and had a house with a basement or work area I'd keep the Shopsmith, but at this point I can't see that happening.

I have a lot of stuff of my father's I need to unload, and maybe I can begin photographing things tomorrow, and then upload them for people to help me identify.

Thanks.

-cjg

Okay, so I finally got around to taking some pictures. I apologize in advance for the terrible quality. I was having a lot of trouble with the auto-focus of my camera today. I'm really irked that I spent so much time down in the basement photographing and cataloging only for the photos to turn out terribly. I deleted a bunch of photos because they turned out so badly. The small preview screen makes it really tough to see if the photo turned out all right or not. When I view them on my PC, well... not good. Really annoying. I'll need to retake a ton when I eventually sell this all...

I also tried to catalog as many parts. I have a list of: 1) things where I know both what it is and its part number; 2) what it is, but not sure of the part number; and 3) part numbers, but not sure what it is. Any help identifying these things would be incredibly appreciated. Also, I've attached an Excel sheet with the catalog of parts I just mentioned. The items that have a ? in front of them with a description in parentheses are ones where I had the part number but didn't know what it was, so I searched them on the Shopsmith website. Hopefully those are right...

Here are the photos of things for which I need help identifying:

1) http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v708/ ... elp_01.jpg

2) http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v708/ ... elp_02.jpg

3) http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v708/ ... elp_03.jpg

4) http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v708/ ... elp_04.jpg

5) http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v708/ ... elp_05.jpg

6) http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v708/ ... elp_06.jpg

7) http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v708/ ... elp_07.jpg

8) http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v708/ ... elp_08.jpg

On 8, I have the part numbers for the first 3 chisels, but not the second two. I suppose they are sequential along with the first 3...

Also, here is the main unit. Again, sorry about the bad image quality.

1) http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v708/ ... C_8054.jpg

2) http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v708/ ... C_8048.jpg

On the main unit, does anyone know the part numbers of that guard, the miter gauge, or the table saw top?

Thank you very much for ANY help or insight anyone can provide! Cleaning out the basement is a huge undertaking for me, and an emotional one, too, since I'm basically sifting through my dad's favorite hobbies.

Regards,

cjg

OK, why worry about individual part numbers, like the
lathe chisels.

5 piece Shopsmith Lathe chisel set.

Last 2 pictures, Mk 5, model 500 (I think, guys
back me up on that.) Lower saw guard, Mk5
table, and miter gauge.

What I'm trying to say, don't worry about part
numbers. Except for a few parts, everything here will
fit most every other Mark series Shopsmith. (And, some
will even fit ALL Shopsmiths, including my Model 10 stuff.)

steve

I will attempt to name all the parts. I am sure someone else will correct me or know anything that I do not.

picture 1 The bag looks like it contains parts for the sharpening guide. The table goes on the belt sander. The tail stock and tool rest are used with the lathe feature.

picture 2 and 3 lower saw guard

picture 4 top is a live center middle is a dead center lower is a drive center bottom is a shaper cutter

picture 5 top is a feather board not sure what the other things go to.

picture 6 is the upper saw guard

picture 7 is the belt sander table

picture 8 is the 5 piece lathe chisel set

Brenda nailed em.

Do not be concerned re part numbers.

Just sell the whole thing as a package. Except for the belt sander(and it's table), it all came with the base SS to begin with.

Many items in the excel file are indeed extras. Bits, conical disk, mortising stuff to name a few.

Question is, where do you intend to attempt selling it?

skou wrote:Last 2 pictures, Mk 5, model 500 (I think, guys
back me up on that.) Lower saw guard, Mk5
table, and miter gauge.

So I'm following right, you're saying that the headstock appears to be a Mark V, model 500?

As for the part numbers... I just like to be complete/accurate.

thunderbirdbat wrote:picture 1 The bag looks like it contains parts for the sharpening guide. The table goes on the belt sander. The tail stock and tool rest are used with the lathe feature.

Aha! Duh, I should've just looked up the part number on the Shopsmith website like I did for a few other things. Well, now I know I do have the parts for the sharpening jig. I found the instruction sheet for the sharpening jog, so I figured out what the gray plastic jig was. But, from the picture I could tell I was missing pieces. This bag, I think, had all the pieces I noticed in the picture but thought I was missing.

picture 4 top is a live center middle is a dead center lower is a drive center bottom is a shaper cutter

Okay, for the first three items... Not sure I follow...?

A live, a dead, and a drive?

picture 5 top is a feather board not sure what the other things go to.

I found the other two items along with only Shopsmith stuff, so I made a perhaps-wrong assumption they go with something. They're of the same finish/material as the other item, so I thought they may be Shopsmith parts.

JPG wrote:Just sell the whole thing as a package. Except for the belt sander(and it's table), it all came with the base SS to begin with.

Many items in the excel file are indeed extras. Bits, conical disk, mortising stuff to name a few.

Question is, where do you intend to attempt selling it?

Yeah, I kinda don't want to piecemeal this out. But I do want to be able to tell people what I have before they come look at it.

I'm not entirely sure how I want to sell this. I'd prefer to sell it in a radius where someone could come here to get it. I work in transportation for a Fortune 100 manufacturer, so I could easily arrange for an LTL pickup of everything to ship it anywhere in the country, but I do *not* want to go through the hassle of crating the Shopsmith itself. Ideally, I'd sell it such that a couple guys could come with a pickup to get it. Just wrangle up a friend or two and carry everything upstairs.

We just sold a tractor through a local newspaper, so that may be an option, but it's pretty limited radius and a fairly new zero-turn tractor is a much more popular item than a Shopsmith, I'd say.

I see people posting eBay and Craigslist listings on here. Do you (or anyone else) know how people actually ship what they sell, then? Do you pretty much have to go with something like an LTL carrier unless the sale is local?

Thank you to all three of you for your help so far! I'm glad there's a forum that is fairly active and dedicated to Shopsmith.