On Wed, 14 Sep 2005 10:22:58 -0500, Patriarch
wrote:


While I understand that you do not like your Shopsmith there are lots
of people who have made very nice furniture and other projects with
them. I can assure you that they often have to make mitered crosscuts
on boards longer than 12". My crosscut sled is wider than 12" and it
works quite well on mitered crosscuts. In fact I would not be
concerned in the least in making a 45 degree mitered crosscut on
boards 4 or 5 foot long. After that the physics do limit you since the
other end of the board might drag on the floor or hit the ceiling, so
I use either my compound miter saw or my RAS. Contrary to popular
belief, you can also make mitered rip cuts on long boards quite well
on a Shopsmith. In any case, the issue was riving knives - and
Shopsmiths have them. They stay the same distance from the blade no
matter the depth, they are in place for all miter cuts and they are
extremely easy to take off and reinstall as needed. If a tool as lowly
in some people's eyes as a Shopsmith can have a functioning riving
kinife, then why can't a $2,000 Powermatic? (Said with a wink since a
new Shopsmith costs more than $2,000).
Dave Hall

"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by
those who have not got it." -- G.B. Shaw

Not to drift TOO far off topic, but...

Maybe it's a user error. Tilt the table to 45 degrees, down on the
right. Can't go left, because the motor unit's there. At some, fairly
quick length limitation, you run into the tubes and/or right table
support. Move everything to the end, like one would on a bowl lathe?
On that undersized table? Clamping everything to a sled, so it doesn't
slide off? Get me a freakin' hand saw & a good plane!

Guess I didn't say it didn't take a moment or two to set up, a little
planning and some fine grit sandpaper on the fence of your sled to
keep things from sliding. BTW you can go left because you can extend
the quill to get the table far enough away from the headstock to clear
it. I don't know if you can get the full 45 degrees though.

Again, a riving knife on a tilting TABLE is a piece of cake. It's the
tilting TABLE that is an obsolete, questionable design.

No argument that if you were buying a saw that a tilting table would
be a poor design. If you bought a Shopsmith, however, you were not
buying a saw, you were buying a multi-purpose tool. As with any such
beast some design compromises are requied for each purpose in order to
allow for the other purposes. There is just no way to produce a
machine that does those specific 5 functions without a tilting table.
I agree that if a person has the room for all stand alone tools and
the desire to dedicate that space to woodworking tools then a
Shopsmith is clearly not their best choice.

What really ****ed me off about the Shopsmith really was that I got
taken in by the hype, and bought at a home show. I paid way more than
Unisaw money, and should have just walked away. The 'only works on
Shopsmith' accessories were a rude surprise, too. Every needed add-on
piece required another mail order, with a 10 day delay, and an expensive
charge.

I can understand that! Too many things need Shopsmith specific stuff,
and they do seem quite proud of their stuff given the price. Actually
that would be expected for a niche product with a small market and
small volumes.


Yes, folks can really do nice work on a Shopsmith. I did, too,
actually. But it was WAY more work than it needed to be, with a lot
more scrap. The Shopsmith sits in storage, replaced by real tools. One
of my sons wants it, when he gets out of his apartment space limits.

There. Sorry. That feels better. I'm going to the shop now.

Patriarch


;-)
Dave Hall

"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who
have not got it." -- G.B. Shaw