Shopsmith Forums

I had been searching on eBay for an overarm router upgrade for my Shopsmith standalone router table for about 2 years and last fall I got lucky! I found one complete with the stand for sale 10 miles from home! ONLY $150 and missing just the pin routing insert and pins which I ordered.

I would like to add a set of retractable casters to this table. However, they are no longer sold by Shopsmith. I believe the part number for the set was 555456.

Does anyone know if the Mark V set will work on this machine and what modifications would be needed?

Hi, and welcome to the ownership of the old OPR!

The casters are a lot different then the ones on the shopsmith. That is not to say it can't be done but it will not easy. Did you happen to call them and ask? I know they were parting with all the old stuff but maybe somewhere one didn't sell or was returned or ??? I guess I'm saying it can't hurt to try if you haven't.

Once it warms up I can take some pictures of what they look like... thinking like maybe March. If you haven't found anything by then remind me and post a few.

If you don't have the manual try and get that as well. On ones with some age to them I'd make sure you pay attention to the dovetail ways and the brass gib... mine was in need of attention due to some gailing. And I'd check the alignment as well as adjusting the gib properly.

Ed

Hi Dneumann,

First, let me also welcome you to the forum! A great bunch of folks here.

Ed Reible is the Old Style OPR expert! I'm sorry that he is frozen out of his shop at the moment, so let me try to help out.

I had taken some pictures a while back of the casters on my Old OPR, here (I hope) is the link to them;

http://picasaweb.google.com/PERRYOBEAR/OPRStandCasters#

The photos are of the caster set that I got from Shopsmith (p/n555456) a few years ago. As you can see they are definitely at least close cousins of the Mk5 casters. However, they are mounted to special steel brackets which are in turn mounted to the legs of the OPR's stand.

Even with the Shopsmith kit there were modifications required to the OPR stand, including shortening the side brackets and relocating them higher up on the legs, and drilling mounting holes in the legs for the caster brackets.

I think that a MK 5 caster set can probably be adapted, but as Ed stated, it will take some work, especially fabricating the brackets. By the way, the brackets themselves had part numbers (left bracket p/n 515925, right bracket p/n 515926) you need two of each.

If you decide to give it a try, please let me know if I can help with anything (measurements, photos, etc.) as I have both the Mk5 and OPR casters to compare in my shop.

Dennis

Thanks for all the information. I thought the standard caster set would work, but did not want to go though the trial and error of fabricating brackets or blocks for mounting. I will check with Shopsmith this week and have them add the four brackets to the backordered portion of my recent order.

However, I might shop around for a set of used casters or wait for them to go on sale as the full price $95 is a bit much. I can experiment mounting the brackets using the caser set on my Power Station if I ever get some free time in my shop.

Does anyone happen to have the installation instructions for the OPR caster set or template diagram they would be willing to share?

Thanks again.

I am looking for the instructions to install the Shopsmith casters on the stand alone overarm pin router stand. I have ordered the brackets and already have some casters I took off my planer stand. Can you help me?