Shopsmith Forums

everettdavis wrote:Magpie Title.jpg

Below is a list of the versions of the MagPie Employee Newsletter contained in the recent documents acquired on eBay. They advertised 1952-1957. As I completed the scanning last evening, I found Nov Dec 1958 was among the documents included.

The acquisition did not contain all the sequential issues, nor did all the issues contained have all the pages of the issue as pages 3 & 4 (in red) in the 6 page issues were all missing.

Those would have been single page inserts between folded 11 x 17 documents containing pages 1, 2, 5, & 6. Pages 3 & 4 may well have been intended to be removed for some purpose by the employee, perhaps a form to fill out etc.

One other notation was MagPie Vol 3 No 1 which appeared twice – the October 1954 issue should have been MagPie Vol 3 No 2 but was printed mis-numbered as No 1.

The point is there are issues that are missing in the collection, and within those missing issues there well could be pertinent information on The People of Shopsmith and Events of the Period documented that we do not yet have to review.

We need to be on the look-out for more MagPie Employee Newsletters that could be out there and someday become available.

One tidbit of information speaks to the Australian availability of the Shopsmith in Nov 1952 issue which announced that now there was a Manufacturing Agreement allowing the Shopsmiths to be actually manufactured in Australia, meaning castings and machining was now done on the continent as Shopsmith had provided the molds themselves to an Australian foundry. These would have been 10ER vintage machines as Mark 5 will not be introduced until 1954

Nov – Dec 1956 issue (a full four years later) shows a photo of 6 of the 60 Shopsmith Mark 5’s being hoisted onto the ship ‘Powell River’ at the Port of Oakland’s Outer Harbor Terminal headed for Western Canada.

They noted that all shipments of Magna’s products to Canada and the Hawaiian Islands are made by Magna Western Sales Corporation. Hawaii would become a state August 21, 1959 for historical context.

Here is what I have:

MagPie Vol 1 No 3 - Nov 1952 Pages 1234

MagPie Vol 1 No 4 - Dec 1952 Pages 1234

MagPie Vol 2 No 7 - Mar 1954 Pages 1234

MagPie Vol 2 No 8 - Apr 1954 Pages 1234

MagPie Vol 2 No 11 - Jul Aug 1954 Pages 123456

MagPie Vol 3 No 1 - Sep 1954 Pages 1234

MagPie Vol 3 No 1 - Oct 1954 Pages 1234

MagPie Vol 3 No 4 - Jan 1955 Pages 1234

MagPie Vol 3 No 5 - Feb Mar 1955 Pages 1234

MagPie Vol 3 No 6 - Apr May 1955 Pages 1234

MagPie Vol 3 No 8 - Aug Sep 1955 Pages 1234

MagPie Vol 4 No 1 - Jan Feb 1956 Pages 1234

MagPie Vol 4 No 2 - Mar April 1956 Pages 123456

MagPie Vol 4 No 4 - Jul Aug 1956 Pages 1234

MagPie Vol 4 No 6 - Nov Dec 1956 Pages 123456

MagPie Vol 5 No 1 - Jan Feb 1957 Pages 1234

MagPie Vol 5 No 3 - May June 1957 Pages 1234

MagPie Vol 5 No 6 - Nov Dec 1958 Pages 1234

There is a lot to read through as I try to extract any important release dates or other items we may find of interest.

The people themselves are interesting, and I plan to do something with that info.

With all the newsletter issues that were not present in the collection, I am certain there will be people that were there that are not yet mentioned, that we might find interesting to know about.

I will try to put together something for genealogical research types as there is a lot of family history contained in various biological information in the newsletters.

Needless to say, if other MagPie collections are found, we need to preserve them.

Everett

drGeek wrote:Thanks again Everett for sharing your adventure into the history of the Shopsmith with all of us. I have to admit that I feel like a little kid asking "are we there yet", as I anticipate your book! Each tidbit is more enticing than the last. Your preservation efforts are appreciated by us all.

Thanks again for letting me go back in time to the 1950's of my parents!!!!

jeff