Shopsmith Forums

I bought my ShopSmith used a couple of years ago and today I appreciate it little more than I used to for three reasons after I had some quality time with it last weekend.

I needed about 6" of 1" dowel. My first thought was that I'd have to drive 40 miles round trip to get it and lose an hour doing so. Then I decided to try turning one myself and managed to get a piecs of scrap maple within .05" of 1" round.

I bought the set of three ShopSmith blades with the 1.25" arbors and it crosscuts prefinished plywood more cleanly than my Festool tracksaw.

Finally, I have a Delta 6" floor standing jointer with a cracked mount for the fence. It cost more than new ShopSmith jointer, but has a a larger capacity. The problem with the Delta is that even though it is barely 10 years old, there are 47 parts available for it of the 214 on the parts list and most of those are generic screws and washers. So for want of a $60.00 part, I am left with nothing but a few hundred pounds of scrap metal. Meanwhile parts are still available for ShopSmiths that were built before I was born.

twistsol wrote:I bought my ShopSmith used a couple of years ago and today I appreciate it little more than I used to for three reasons after I had some quality time with it last weekend.

I needed about 6" of 1" dowel. My first thought was that I'd have to drive 40 miles round trip to get it and lose an hour doing so. Then I decided to try turning one myself and managed to get a piecs of scrap maple within .05" of 1" round.

I bought the set of three ShopSmith blades with the 1.25" arbors and it crosscuts prefinished plywood more cleanly than my Festool tracksaw.

Finally, I have a Delta 6" floor standing jointer with a cracked mount for the fence. It cost more than new ShopSmith jointer, but has a a larger capacity. The problem with the Delta is that even though it is barely 10 years old, there are 47 parts available for it of the 214 on the parts list and most of those are generic screws and washers. So for want of a $60.00 part, I am left with nothing but a few hundred pounds of scrap metal. Meanwhile parts are still available for ShopSmiths that were built before I was born.

twistsol wrote:Meanwhile parts are still available for ShopSmiths that were built before I was born.

Unreal, isn't it. No "planned obsolescence"!