My latest project is to restore Ky’s grandfather’s shopsmith tool:
It’s a really cool old-school piece of machinery with a 1/2hp motor, reconfigurable into a lathe, a table saw, a drill press, and probably any number of other cunning layouts. We picked it up last weekend from the storage shed, and brought it back home. It probably weighs 200-300 lbs, and isn’t quite in usable condition. The slider rails for the motor head are slightly corroded and the motor and lathe rests don’t slide along the bar. The motor needs rewiring, and probably also being grounded. The whole tool generally needs cleaning up and a little tlc to get it back into working action.
This evening I made a start, and disassembled the major components and cleaned up the main rails. WD-40, steel wool and elbow grease has made the rails significantly shinier again, but I may try to polish them up a bit more with some emery paper or even something like Brasso. I made a start at cleaning up the main frame pieces, but need to finish those off. I was also thinking about replacing the top sheet of the cabinet with a thin sheet of stainless, or something else more resistant than thin plywood.
The photos of this evening’s work are here.
Update (April 3rd): I polished the rails a little, and determined it didn’t really do anything too useful. I also cleaned up the rest piece, and slid it back onto the rails. Having manhandled it off, it slid back on nice and smoothly now it’s all cleaned up. Photos.
2 Comments
Dave on April 8, 2008 at 7:40 pm.
Glad to see your rescuing the machine. There is a ton of advice, documnets and photos to aid you in your endevour on Yahoo User Groups
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Shopsmith10ERusers/
I’ve acquired 4 of these rusty crusty machines in the past 1/2 year and have finnished restoring 2 of them and am about 75 % through the clean up of the other two.
Definately rewire with 3 wire grounded cord.
Cleaning the way tubes I’d recomend using a combinaton of emerry cloth 120 –> 500 –> 1000 grit , Green Scotch Pads then use Mother Aluminum Mag polish (all available at NAPA, WalMart, etc…). I’m now at the stage where I’m using the two other machins to restore the others. Elbow grease is still a key ingrediant.
I’ve been using Rustomium Primer and Paint products for the painted surfaces though they used some heacvy duty aluminumn on a numer of components that look good shined up with Mothers.
The knobs when gently held in the Drill chuck will gleam and clean up quickly.
Use of a pulley puller to remove the puleeys from the Motor and Head stock is the way to go when disassembly of the machine.
Anyway good luck and hope you enjoy your new 200 + pound Swiss Army knife of wood working tools.
Ian on April 9, 2008 at 9:07 am.
Dave, thanks for the info and all the tips. I had no idea what model it was, much less that there was an active yahoo community for them. I’m sure I’ll be in there taking a look soon. I just got hold of the original manual and some of the magazines published for Shopsmith owners back around ’51; I’ll try and get those scanned in soon – maybe that would be of interest to others too.