ShopSmith Mark V yes or no?

[JohnMichael Schlim]

Hello all,
I have pretty decent home hobby workshop and I search CL and Ebay pretty regular. I keep seeing these ShopSmith tool and accessories for pretty cheap. I am considering picking up one for our family farm in Kansas. The idea being we would not have to haul so many power tools back and forth. My question is how good is a shop smith mark V if it is in decent shape. Are they accurate? could you use it as your only contractor TS, Jointer, Drill press etc.. I would be comparing the tools to contractor versions of TS a delta bench drill press, hand jig saw, a 6 in bench jointer etc...

Any concerns about safety, fences, power would be appreciated.

JM

[keith ouellette]

I haven't used one myself but My brother in law owns one and has had it for many years. He didn't like it to much but I don't remember why. I know he has made a few things with it but has told me if he was going to do more than just " one little project a year" he would get other tools. If space was a big problem then .....

Aside from that I did have a combination machine which had a boring, sliding table saw, jointer, planer, shaper set up. aside from the fact that it didn't work well ( I think I got a bad one) I couldn't stand changing fences and flipping things over for every different task. Looked smooth as silk on the videos I saw but in reality it was a real pain.

Just my 2 cents until more informed info comes along.

[Ron Jones near Indy]

I have a SS that makes a very good drill press, a fair lathe and a good disk sander. When needed the horizontal boring feature is very good. It can be used as a table saw and some very nice work can be done on it. Plan on spending time switching from setup to setup. It will make you plan your order of operations carefully to save time.

The real weakness of the machine is the table saw. Any time you have a tilting table instead of a tilting arbor it becomes an issue. You may be limited on the projects (size of boards) you can cut comfortably. The saw is the weakness of the machine IMHO. I only use mine for the DP, lathe and sander.

[Dick Heifner]

Hi John
The shopsmith is good for sanding, and those things, but it is not very good saw. I had one for 10 years.
Dick

[Dave Lehnert]

I started on a shopsmith and have built a house full of furniture with it. For what you want one for would be perfect. The one feature that the Shopsmith comes with that is often overlooked is the variable speed. I am doing some intarsia projects right now. I can slow the belt sander speed down enough I can hold the small wood pieces by hand to shape.

If you want some more info Shopsmith has a forum at their home page.

I sent you a private Message so look in your in box.

[Heather Thompson]

John,

My father has had a Shopsmith for years, I learned on it at his side, bought one for myself a number of years ago. The tablesaw is the weakest point but it is very useable, the drill press, sander, horizontal boring feature are all very good, the lathe is ok as long as you add weight via a shopmade shelf between the legs (I store the sandbags that are used for weight in the back of my pickup on the lower shelf). As to the issue of the size of boards that you can handle, there are many resourceful ways to deal with that, see attached link.
http://home.wmis.net/~eastmant/photo.../ripping1.html
As to comparing the drill press feature to a bench top version, there is a member here that sold there floor model drill press and now only uses their Shopsmith for that function.

Heather

[Kirk Simmons]

I own a very nice table saw that I am happy with, but I see a lot of Shopsmith V's for sale on CL and have considered buying one as a secondary tool system, setting it up just as a drill press, lathe, sander, band saw, etc. I think it might work very well this way if the price was right.

Owning it as my only tool would drive me crazy though, as the table saw feature, on the older saws without the add-on tables at least, seems pretty marginal. That being said a lot of people really like them, and I don't personally own one, so my opinions might not hold water.

[David DeCristoforo]

You tryin' to start another fight? "Dissing" the SS is a good way to do it. I had a SS once, a long time ago. My father wrote the book that came with them (Power Tool Woodworking for Everyone) You might say I "grew up" with the SS. I used the one I had for a few years and then "graduated" to heavier duty machines. So this is not a completely uninformed opinion.

The SS is a very clever design. It can perform fairly well in a "low output" or "hobbiest" environment. And it can be jigged up to do a surprising number of tasks. But it is what it is and the attempt to be a "do all" machine puts it squarely in the "jack of all trades, master of none" category. As a drill press, it is excellent as long as you factor in the less than rigid structure. As a horizontal boring machine, it's great. As a lathe, it's shaky and underpowered. As a disk sander, it is superb. As a table saw, it scares the bejezus out of me. The table is too small, too high and too rickety for me to be comfortable working on it. The fence is a joke. And while the blade is secured to the arbor with a nut, the arbor is secured to the power shaft with a set screw. That alone is enough to give me bad dreams. And tilting tables have never been worth a hill of beans in my book.

All other functions (jointer, planer, band saw, etc.) require the purchase of "attachments" which are simply small machines with no motors or stands that attach to the SS and use it's motor via a coupling (again secured by set screws). These typically do not cost any less than decent used single purpose tools of equivalent capacity. So it's hard to appreciate any real gain there.

Also, the SS is not cheap (new ones start at three grand) so it is entirely possible that by looking around for good used tools, you could put together a much better basic shop without spending any more and you would be free from the hassle of having to stop work to reconfigure the SS every time you wanted to use a different tool.

[Kirk Simmons]

A nice article I found on buying a used Shopsmith. It talks about what to look for, motor sizes and a bunch of other useful things.

http://www.shopsmithacademy.com/SS_A...20Mark%20V.pdf

[Joe Scharle]

David, I recognized your last name when I first saw it, but had no idea R. J. was your father. His book was part of my 1978 SS and I still have both. I learned so very much from him.

[Bob Aquino]

David, I recognized your last name when I first saw it, but had no idea R. J. was your father. His book was part of my 1978 SS and I still have both. I learned so very much from him.

I also wondered if there was a connection with that name. Now I know...

[JohnMichael Schlim]

Thanks for all the input guys and gals!

[Dave Lehnert]

You tryin' to start another fight? "Dissing" the SS is a good way to do it. I had a SS once, a long time ago. My father wrote the book that came with them (Power Tool Woodworking for Everyone) You might say I "grew up" with the SS. I used the one I had for a few years and then "graduated" to heavier duty machines. So this is not a completely uninformed opinion.

The SS is a very clever design. It can perform fairly well in a "low output" or "hobbiest" environment. And it can be jigged up to do a surprising number of tasks. But it is what it is and the attempt to be a "do all" machine puts it squarely in the "jack of all trades, master of none" category. As a drill press, it is excellent as long as you factor in the less than rigid structure. As a horizontal boring machine, it's great. As a lathe, it's shaky and underpowered. As a disk sander, it is superb. As a table saw, it scares the bejezus out of me. The table is too small, too high and too rickety for me to be comfortable working on it. The fence is a joke. And while the blade is secured to the arbor with a nut, the arbor is secured to the power shaft with a set screw. That alone is enough to give me bad dreams. And tilting tables have never been worth a hill of beans in my book.

All other functions (jointer, planer, band saw, etc.) require the purchase of "attachments" which are simply small machines with no motors or stands that attach to the SS and use it's motor via a coupling (again secured by set screws). These typically do not cost any less than decent used single purpose tools of equivalent capacity. So it's hard to appreciate any real gain there.

Also, the SS is not cheap (new ones start at three grand) so it is entirely possible that by looking around for good used tools, you could put together a much better basic shop without spending any more and you would be free from the hassle of having to stop work to reconfigure the SS every time you wanted to use a different tool.

Thanks for sharing the PTWFE info.

For anyone interested. Shopsmith has that book on-line. It is a great read for a non-shopsmith user as well. A lot of great tips and trick.

http://www.shopsmith.com/academy/curriculumlinks.htm

Use the links to the left of the page as the main links do not seem to work.

[Richard Wagner]

Thanks for sharing the PTWFE info.

For anyone interested. Shopsmith has that book on-line. It is a great read for a non-shopsmith user as well. A lot of great tips and trick.

http://www.shopsmith.com/academy/curriculumlinks.htm

Use the links to the left of the page as the main links do not seem to work.

David speaks some truth in his evaluation of the Shopsmith Mark V but only if he is speaking of the older machines. The new Mark V has a much larger table, a larger motor and is much more stable than its earlier predecessor.

Needless to say, I am very pleased with mine. I am truly a hobbiest so I never experience the short comings that might become apparent in a production environment. But then it was never intended to be a production machine.

[Dave Lehnert]

David speaks some truth in his evaluation of the Shopsmith Mark V but only if he is speaking of the older machines. The new Mark V has a much larger table, a larger motor and is much more stable than its earlier predecessor.

Needless to say, I am very pleased with mine. I am truly a hobbiest so I never experience the short comings that might become apparent in a production environment. But then it was never intended to be a production machine.

Also will add that Shopsmith is just on the verge of introducing a new headstock called the Power Pro. It is a electronic variable speed unit just like the Nova wood lathe. Will give a wider speed range.