Shopsmith Forums

I dug my family's Shopsmith out of hiding in the basement to see what was there, turns out quite a bit. Enjoy the pics. Oh yeah, anyone know what the small slotted table is. Odd thing, it is spring loaded, so if pivoted, it returns. Thanks!

That fits on the in feed side of the saw table to extend the miter slot to make wider cross cuts with the miter gauge.

creichen44,

Nice collection of many still in their original boxes' items. John already explained the Front Table Extension. I did notice in the third picture you have a Router/Shaper Fence but that one is for the Mark VII made in the 1960's. To use it on a Mark 5 holes must be drilled into the Table top in the correct place. Below is a picture of a "Greenie" era Shaper Fence for the Mark 5/V 500 with the original Table system which also fits on the Model 10E and 10ER Table as shown.

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Good Catch. Not sure drilling is a good idea. JMO

Thanks all for the info, not sure I'm up for drilling to make that piece fit, my luck I'd wreck something...

creichen44,

I would be hesitant to drill into the tabletop too.

Since you have the Mark VII Shaper Fence, I have to wonder if your Mark 5 Main Table has already been drilled to use it. The picture below shows a Mark VII Main Table with the Shaper Fence mounting holes indicated by the arrows. On your Mark 5 Main Table, they would be in a similar position but may be on the other side of the Table Insert. The Mark VII can do under table shaping and routing which accounts for the holes being on the right side of the table insert instead of the left side where the Mark 5 Shaper Fence is used. For under table shaping and routing the Mark VII Main Table is rotated 180 degrees from its position shown in the picture below.

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Sorry John, we have kind of gone off topic again.

creichen44,

If you want to continue learning and asking questions about your Shopsmith I would suggest starting your own thread. That way you can have information specific to your Shopsmith in one place.

Win The Wives, And You Win The Day!

(It’s been a bit of time since I’ve made a contribution here - thanks to those who’ve kept the thread going!)

In late 1948, after a full year in production, the new SHOPSMITH tool was making quite a splash, but the whiz kids at Magna weren’t sitting on their hands. No, they wanted a 10-E in every garage, and they had to figure out how to help all their potential customers win over the financial gatekeepers in all those households: the wives!

So articles like the attached were targeted to their buyers’ better half to help convey how much this new SHOPSMITH would benefit HER! Did it work? You be the judge…
.

Stop the presses! Oh, never mind…

So, I got some vintage Magna documents in the mail today from a recent online auction, and an item included in the pack was one I’d seen many times before - the May 1957 price list and accessories catalog.
. Nothing special about this. A lot were printed back in the day, with a lot seeming to have survived to today. But for some reason I gave this one a little closer look, especially on the back page where the 10er-compatible accessories were listed.
. It was a pretty small list of accessories for the 10er by 1957 (clearly the focus was on the Mark 5, and even these meager offerings would disappear altogether in a couple of years, with the release of the new Mark 2!). Even a couple of years earlier, the 10er accessories were fairly numerous, as shown on this 1955 accessories catalog.
. But in making that comparison, I noticed something you numismatists in the group would appreciate - like all those double-struck anomalies in the coin world that make otherwise ordinary coins rare and valuable: that’s not a 10er table insert!
. So, does this fall into the category of the graphic artists at Magna taking some shortcuts, or the printers telling them there’s no time for an update as the presses wait for no one?!

Or maybe I just have too much time on my hands…

jpdalton wrote: ↑Sat Jun 03, 2023 12:24 am So, does this fall into the category of the graphic artists at Magna taking some shortcuts, or the printers telling them there’s no time for an update as the presses wait for no one?!

I'm guessing the graphic artists took a shortcut under time pressure. Ads were all laid out by hand back then, but even today when it's all on a computer and no paper is involved they still make mistakes in the advertising material. The recent introductory ads for the Gen 2 PowerPro mistakenly listed a headstock upgrade kit for the same price as an entire headstock. You still might have the only such copy in existence though and it would still be a rare find within our world.

The catalogs have had a lot of errors over the years. John, your example above is an obvious error for the Model 10 Table Inserts. When trying to figure out when changes occurred the catalogs are the last thing I look at.