Shopsmith Forums

For those of you with orders that are outstanding, I saw this response from Krista at Shopsmith to someone's son who had ordered a speed reducer and the father posted that it was taking a long time (3 months) to come in. I was impressed that she responded within 15 minutes of his post.

" I do apologize that someone in customer service told him it was in. The speed reducer is a 40+ year old part and we are missing 3 main components for it that our supplier no longer makes, therefore we are trying to find a tool maker who can make the tooling for us to get the parts casted. A lot of parts to these machines are 50 + years old and manufacturers stop making Parts a lot when they are that old, it takes a lot of time to find some one who can make them if we even can. We are working on it though and we do send out emails on backorder parts. If you would like to private message me your email or his we can make sure he is on the list."

I like that response.

No, it doesn't solve the problem, but I think we can all appreciate the difficulties.

IMHO, Shopsmith should make it clear that there is an unknown ship date that may be many months from date of order. That would set the buyers expectations and minimize future disappointment.

beeg wrote:So WHY didn't SS get the tooling back?

Perhaps they were not SS unique parts.(ss did not own the tooling)

tossing out my .02 ,
Just wondering how many of those parts one would need to buy to make them affordable to both parties and how many SS would buy if they found some one to avoid this going forward , There are a few small machine shops in this area but like everything else they might be some negotiating to benefit both parties. maybe there are other old obsolete parts they could work a package deal on ?

Considering the 'recent' trend of NOT providing out of production parts, I doubt that would interest RLF.

However speed reducer parts should be 'in production' today.

JPG wrote:Considering the 'recent' trend of NOT providing out of production parts, I doubt that would interest RLF.

However speed reducer parts should be 'in production' today.

The speed reducer can be ordered from the website and apparently has been ordered based on this Facebook post. In reading some of the older posts on this forum, I got the general idea that at some point Shopsmith stopped producing the speed reducers and that the only way to get one was to find a used one, which seem to be fairly rare. Has anyone ordered a new speed reducer in the past few years, and/or know the status on Shopsmith's production of these? I mean I read the response that Shopsmith gave on this Facebook post, but just wondering if anyone has more information. I have thought about getting into woodturning more and so I am considering getting a speed reducer, but on the used market they seem to be a bit of a unicorn to find.

beeg wrote:https://www.shopsmith.com/ownersite/cat ... educer.htm

Yeah, I saw that the speed reducer is listed on the website. It doesn't seem like Shopsmith can manufacture it at present based on the Facebook post mentioned in this thread. Just wondering if anyone has purchased a new speed reducer from Shopsmith in the past 1-2 years. It seems odd that they have it on the website and took an order but can't produce it. If anyone knows of a working used speed reducer that is for sale please let me know.