Shopsmith 10E - Introduction

This is a blog about my Shopsmith 10E. I have begun the process of cleaning, repairing, and tooling up this excellent machine, and consider it the best investment I've ever made. Not that it was a lot of money -- it wasn't, and needn't be. Of course tooling it up to be a productive member of the family can add up, but these things are relative. Many items are expensive that needn't be; the result of a large market of retirees and avid hobbyists, who will pay exorbitant prices for a piece of steel on wood as long as it has some dude's name on it. I'm talking here about turning tools. If you've got some steel and some wood, you can make these things yourself. But apparently there is money to be made selling them for over $50 per stick. Outrageous! Homey don't play that, because Homey can't afford to be a sucker at this point...

There is a lot of history behind the Shopsmith. (see History of the Shopsmith). The machine I own bears the serial number 8121, which I believe makes it among the first few to be made in 1948. Actually the model number itself tells me that; the 10E was the predecessor of several other models. The letter "E" stands for "experimental" and it was followed by the 10ER ("experimental revised"), and later by the Mark II and Mark V.

The Mark V was revived when the Magna Engineering Company was bought after several years in mothballs, and is still being sold today. For liability reasons (or so I understand), the new company doesn't support the 10E or 10ER. I can well imagine that the word "experimental" in a machine tool would give any corporate lawyer fits! The new company took the name of the original machine, "Shopsmith" as its corporate brand, instead of keeping the Magna name. But I'm not an expert on the history; see the link for a start on that!

However my 60 year-old machine is quite smooth-running, and I've found a whole community of avid users of the old machines, along with a healthy eBay community continually recycling the old attachments and accessories. This is a testament to the vision and execution of a true feat of engineering and manufacturing.

It is one thing to imagine a multipurpose machine, quite a greater challenge to bring this imaginary tooling into production. "It slices, it dices, it never needs sharpening! But wait!" But the creators of the Shopsmith 10E did more than bring their idea into production: they applied standards of manufacturing that were at that time typically reserved for metal-working machine tools, in terms of the tolerance for variations in the movement of the machine. It is this last feature, the quality of the manufacture, that is the reason for its longevity. To be sure, there are a variety of tools that imitate this idea (and the basic idea is attractive to anyone who has ever wondered, even in passing, why every machine needs its own motor), but it would be impossible to surpass the standards set by and for the Shopsmith 10E.

The projects on this blog are, for the time being at least, only about tooling and modifying the 10E itself. I have some things to make with it once it's all tooled up, but that is the subject of another, future blog.