Shopsmith Forums

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/i8uyswwjdnr21 ... 1.mp3?dl=0 - Side 1
https://www.dropbox.com/s/sv4398g0dv70q ... 2.mp3?dl=0 - Side 2

So, what's in YOUR collection??!

John Dalton

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.

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

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!

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

JPG wrote: ↑Sun Feb 20, 2022 10:51 am 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!

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...
https://youtu.be/jEGMMkWCPKw
https://youtu.be/n5QP27eMXMI
https://youtu.be/OyicfZ_htaU
https://youtu.be/SiXRS7PN8Dk
https://youtu.be/fQnt6EXcoZk
https://youtu.be/u5De7P-e17o
https://youtu.be/tjqqMfJG2Qo

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.

larryhrockisland wrote: ↑Sun Feb 20, 2022 10:27 pm 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!

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.

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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.

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