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Share your Magna memorabilia!

jpdalton

In addition to restoring and using old Shopsmith tools, I've also enjoyed collecting Magna/Yuba-era memorabilia - complete-in-box accessories, documentation, marketing materials, books, magazines, retailer items, etc. Unfortunately, no one in my family shares my enthusiasm for this collection, so there its sits in my home office for me alone to enjoy.

So, I figured I'd try to see who else out there would have interest in this stuff, and maybe this community will share a few of its own fun Shopsmith items. I'll start...

About two years ago, I won an eBay auction for a phonograph record - this particular one turned out to be the audio for a 1950s Mark 5 sales training program (I believe the lost accompanying images were on a filmstrip, for those of us old enough to remember that visual medium from grade school!). One of my sons (the proprietor of https://www.kungpowrecording.com/, in case anyone wishes to give him a shout out) subsequently digitized and cleaned up the very scratchy audio, and for anyone interested, you can listen to it (and probably download it) here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/i8uyswwjdnr213p/Shopsmith%20Side%201.mp3?dl=0 - Side 1

https://www.dropbox.com/s/sv4398g0dv70qib/Shopsmith%20Side%202.mp3?dl=0 - Side 2

So, what's in YOUR collection??!

John Dalton

jpdalton

No takers on sharing yet, eh? Well, let me try another one...

I don't have exact provenance on this item, but it's a lenticular "motion button" that appears to have been made as a promotional item to be worn by retailers to support their efforts to encourage prospective buyers to seek demonstration of the revolutionary new Shopsmith 5-in-1 tool. I don't have precise age, but I'm guessing this was from the 10ER era.

davebodner

This is fascinating. Of course, I have nothing comparable.

jpdalton

Dave - thanks for joining the discussion, and I appreciate the feedback on the items I’ve shown so far. I too have always been fascinated with the variety of items Magna produced as accessories and in support of the sale of the machines - and just how many of those have survived the years!

Come back again - I’ve still got a lot of items to post!

JPG

How about just attaching the mp3 files rather than the drop box route?

jpdalton

JPG wrote How about just attaching the mp3 files rather than the drop box route?

JPG - Each files is pretty large (14MB), as they're about 10 minutes of straight material each (basically, each side of the record is one big "song"), so I don't know if there is a place I can upload this to the Forums site. The Dropbox should work with nothing more than a click on the link bringing you to a browser page where you can start each audio file. Sorry, I'm not terribly sophisticated with these sorts of things, and I didn't want to establish new accounts on other platforms that are generally more suited to posting of audio files.

If there's a better place to store these for better community access, I'm happy to email them to someone to help set that up. They're definitely worth a quick listen - very entertaining!

jpdalton

Ok, one last post for the weekend...

This one is an early 1955 printing of a foldout flyer that publicized the film series of Mark 5 tutorials that are thankfully still available on YouTube (I'll provide links at the bottom). Based on a pre-Mark 5 era dealer accessories order blank I have from August, 1953, I know that even at that time a dealer could order the "Magna Movie No. 1" that I'm guessing demonstrated the 10ER to prospective buyers. So, I'm assuming dealers would similarly purchase the Mark 5 film series and present the films in-store to sell the same group on the new machine.

In case you want to check them out, here are the links to the YouTube videos - although they're comical by today's standards, there are some nuggets in there, almost like an abbreviated live performance of RJ DeCristoforo's book...

larryhrockisland

One of my new to me 10ER,s came with some original flyers and I thought a copy of the 1953 Power Tool Woodworking for Everyone was pictured in the listing. Turned out to be a nice 3d looking sales pamphlet to buy the book 🙂. I did eventually get a copy of the book later.

jpdalton

larryhrockisland wrote One of my new to me 10ER,s came with some original flyers and I thought a copy of the 1953 Power Tool Woodworking for Everyone was pictured in the listing. Turned out to be a nice 3d looking sales pamphlet to buy the book :). I did eventually get a copy of the book later.

Larry - thanks for sharing! That's a very interesting stack of documents you show in the first picture. In addition to the PTWFE brochure, I see the "What to Look For When You Buy Power Tools" pamphlet (that looks like one promoting the Mark 5 when it first came out - maybe your original 10ER owner was considering an upgrade?!), and even better is the reprint of the "Western Machinery" article on how the 10ER was manufactured. That latter one I've seen scans of, but never have been able to find a similar reprint for my collection. Nice!

chapmanruss

I have the same flyers Larry shows above so no need to post pictures of them.

Many of you have probably seen the brass belt buckles for sale and I have one of them along with a leather Shopsmith Belt Buckle shown below.

Shopsmith Leather Belt Buckle.jpg

Another item I have is an old Shopsmith TV commercial on 16mm film. I still need to get that converted to video so I can watch it.

Besides the Shopsmith's and a lot of accessories I have a rather large collection of printed materials. These include two versions of the Confidential Dealers' Handbooks. The older one is from Magna Power Tool Corporation copyright 1957. A PDF copy of the Service section can be found on Everett's google drive. The later one is from Shopsmith Inc. These were intended as references for dealers and being in notebook form could be updated as needed.

I have all editions of the book Power Tool Woodworking for Everyone, but a first edition of the 1953 copyright is a prized copy since it is signed by R. J. DeCristoforo to Margret Rauch who worked for Magna. Though not as cool as having the one John has signed by R. J. DeCristoforo to Hans Goldschmidt.

Now not necessarily memorabilia but I do have a restored 1947 Model 10E S/N 1077 that was part of the original 250 made and shipped to Montgomery stores that started it all. Besides S/N 1077 I have in the processing of being restored S/N 1076 and 1033.

Fig 1 recreated r.jpg

SteveMaryland

Oh, I really like this stuff!

Thank you all who are taking the time to share your promo items on this thread. This sort of material makes my and everyone's Shopsmith user experience more informed and enjoyable.

Advertising copy and layout back then had class, creativity and artistry, just like the cars and appliances of that age. Made by talented hands, with not a computer in sight. I like it!

jpdalton

chapmanruss wrote Another item I have is an old Shopsmith TV commercial on 16mm film. I still need to get that converted to video so I can watch it.

Besides the Shopsmith's and a lot of accessories I have a rather large collection of printed materials. These include two versions of the Confidential Dealers' Handbooks. The older one is from Magna Power Tool Corporation copyright 1957. A PDF copy of the Service section can be found on Everett's google drive. The later one is from Shopsmith Inc. These were intended as references for dealers and being in notebook form could be updated as needed.

Russ - Thanks for sharing! Please tell us more about the 16mm film - how did you acquire something like that?? I hope you'll have an opportunity to share the video once you get the film converted.

I too have lots and lots of printed materials in my collection. I acquired a similar Dealer's Handbook (Magna Engineering Corp era) recently, and it inspired me to take some time over the last holiday season and go through my many boxes of materials and get them organized - six, 3-ringed binders later, and I think I've achieved my goal! I'll share some more of those on this thread down the road, but I'd like to reach out to you privately at some point and compare notes, as I've managed to catalog lots of variants of documents, and in a number of cases, link them to individual machine serial numbers. Kind of fun to retrace the history!

Please throw some pictures up of some of your other items - great stuff!

jpdalton

chapmanruss wrote Now not necessarily memorabilia but I do have a restored 1947 Model 10E S/N 1077 that was part of the original 250 made and shipped to Montgomery stores that started it all. Besides S/N 1077 I have in the processing of being restored S/N 1076 and 1033.

Russ - by the way, that's a really cool recreation of the Preliminary Manual Figure 1. One question: is the "sanding disc" you show in the picture original to your 10E machine? I recently acquired a "later" 10E (SN 5052), which had the traditional 6-spoked 10E sanding disc, and I've always been curious whether anyone has seen a 4-spoked (I'm guessing steel??) sanding disc with a 10E as the original Figure 1 shows.

jpdalton

SteveMaryland wrote Oh, I really like this stuff!

Thank you all who are taking the time to share your promo items on this thread. This sort of material makes my and everyone's Shopsmith user experience more informed and enjoyable.

Advertising copy and layout back then had class, creativity and artistry, just like the cars and appliances of that age. Made by talented hands, with not a computer in sight. I like it!

Steve - keep circling back! I know I have plenty more items to post up here, and with the traffic this thread is starting to get, I'm hoping I'll see a few surprises from others as well...

chapmanruss

John,

As noted in my thread Shopsmith Model 10's What When and Where there were a number of differences between the Fig. 1 picture and the actual original Model 10E's produced that came with the earliest Manual. The Sanding Disk was one of those differences. The arbor in the Fig. 1 recreation between the Drill Chuck Key and the Lathe Drive is one I created to look like the one in the original Fig. 1 picture. The actual Arbor that first came with the Model 10E was the 1/2" Arbor P/N 102-35X and the 8" saw blades had a 1/2" arbor hole. There were a number of Model 10 prototypes made and some ended up being used in the plant to help in making the tools. The Fig. 1 picture is likely one of those prototypes.

jpdalton

So, I mentioned earlier that among the items I collect are accessories, especially in their original packaging. There are of course a lot of common ones (I think half the 10ERs I've worked with came with a lightly used jointer cutter head accessory, still in box!), but there are some that don't come around very often, either because few of them were sold, or by their nature, they were used up and disposed of (a Distic Cement stick, for instance).

Here's one I stumbled on and was able to acquire recently that sits on the rare side of the spectrum. I think it's existence debunks the notion that no one took safety seriously back in the 1950s, while simultaneously supporting the same notion (if people actually used the safety equipment they bought, why would it still be in the box 65 years later??)!

chapmanruss

The picture below is part of a Model 10ER Shipping crate I got a few years ago from someone in the Seattle area who bought a "new in crate" Model 10ER that has been stored for decades. It is a cardboard piece framed in some of the wood from the shipping crate.

Model 10 Crate r.jpg

The little metal piece on the upper left corner keeps it straight on the wall.

As for less common accessories for the Model 10's I have, I believe, all of the accessories made for the Model 10E and 10ER except the lower Belt Guard. Below is a picture of the less common Key Switch followed by the less common 2-step Headstock Pulley.

Key Switch r.jpg

Headstock Pulley - 2 step r.jpg

I have yet to see a full Distic but I have a partial one.

Distic r.jpg

It is nice to see that safety was a concern in the 1950's as shown on the catalog page in the post above with the safety goggles at the top of the page. Interesting that right below the goggles is the Blade Guard but back then the Blade Guard for the Mark 5 was an optional item. A step backwards in safety from the Model 10's that at least came with an upper Blade Guard. The Lower Blade Guard for the Model 10's was an optional item and are very rare. One of mine is shown in the picture below.

162-1X - 12 370 R r.jpg

It is not the most functional Lower Blade Guard with a rectangular dust chute and for actual use I use a Mark V Lower Blade Guard P/N 505628.

DarrenDD

Spindle tag from my grandfather’s 1953 10er…

jpdalton

chapmanruss wrote
Below is a picture of the less common Key Switch followed by the less common 2-step Headstock Pulley.

That's a very interesting version of the key switch - I hadn't seen one before with the old part numbering scheme. I have one that came in the mustard colored box with the newer part number. It even had the original instruction sheet still folded up in that tiny box - the sheet looks like it's some sort of parchment (definitely not standard paper like their typical documents) so it would be thin enough to be folded to fit the box.

Key Switch box.jpg

SS Key Switch doc Jul1952.JPEG

Key Switch catalog.jpg

jpdalton

DarrenDD wrote Spindle tag from my grandfather’s 1953 10er…

Darren - thanks for sharing! What a unique item! It always amazes me the sort of inconsequential documents that managed to survive from these early machines. And some of those documents have taken some pretty sketchy trips...

I recently acquired a packet of documents, and the listing showed a tag that had been wired to a Magna Jointer back when it was new. The packet arrived, and no tag! I questioned the seller, and he'd tossed it in the trash thinking no one would want it... Luckily, he didn't empty that trash often, and he retrieved it and sent it to me!