Shopsmith Forums

...til I got one. I just finished replacing some rotten siding on the house. The bs was incredibly useful for making odd-shaped moldings, making tapered shims to compensate for stuff out of square, making jigs to help hold the siding while I was nailing, etc. Three cheers for the SS bandsaw!

Yea its the SPT that stays in place more than the others for me.

b

Me too! The SS bandsaw has been a wonderful thing to have. I still remember taking the new Owners Manual along with me and digesting it in the hours before I could get back to the machine.

Chris

Everybody needs a bandsaw. It's incredibly versatile.

I don't remember how or when I realized I needed a bandsaw, but somehow I knew it had to be part of my shop even when the only power tools I had were a drill and a 5-1/4" circular saw for B&D. I got one of those mini-versions, Rockwell maybe, was good enough for working on plastic material, only good on very thin wood. I knew I'd have more one day.

My first Bandsaw was a bench top unit. I was always having to adjust the tracking. What a pain. Once I had it I would use my SS Jigsaw if I could before using that bench top Bandsaw. That bench top Bandsaw was more of a dust collector and I do not mean sawdust.

Having the Shopsmith Bandsaw gives me a larger cutting capacity and a lot less fussing to use it. Having disassembled, restored and reassembled 5 Shopsmith Bandsaws I believe I know them pretty well. Once aligned they stay that way and no worries for the tracking.

Once I got my first Shopsmith Bandsaw that bench top Bandsaw had to go.

Only thing better than a band saw is having a assortment of different size blades !!

A band saw was one of the early additions to my tool collection (early 1970's). Since I didn't own a shopsmith at the time I went with another brand. In fact I did not add a shopsmith bandsaw until I set up a second shop in the UP of MI. I got a shopsmith to use there and the thing I really missed was having a bandsaw to use. So it made sense to go that path. It was the only SPT I had up there, the rest I could do without.

When that chapter ended I brought both back home, the shopsmith is in storage as I have several but the bandsaw made it in to my shop and resides with my powerpro main machine. I still have the other bandsaw and find that useful but takes up more space then I should allocate to such things.

While I have a collection of blades I find that I mostly have a woodslicer 1/2" blade one one saw and a 3/8" gp blade on the other for 98% of everything I do.

For me I love being able to mount the bandsaw on the "wrong" end and reverse the powerpro. It is rare I mount it anywhere else.

Yes I do wish I had larger saw for resawing but I don't have the room and besides I'm probably past the time in my life where I will be doing much of that sort of work anymore.

Ed