Shopsmith Forums

Hey folks, I have had this (mark V) unit for 3-4 years but haven’t even thought about getting it going since I acquired it, life’s been busy. It’s been in storage probably since the 1980’s, under a roof, but not in a climate controlled building, so the paint is a bit worse for wear- nothing a bit of tlc can’t fix. It has almost all the available attachments, I think, but it’s just parts in buckets and boxes, that’s probably why I’ve avoided the puzzle. I knew it was going to be a chore to sort-research and get it all going.

Other than the jointer, and jigsaw(scroll saw?) I haven’t used any of the other functions.

I think I’m excited to get it all figured out, these things have spectacular functionality, but man there’s a learning curve.

It probably doesn’t help that I think that one of the last owners was a heavy drug user, so many parts are assembled improperly. So I’m just sorting one thing at a time. Wrapping my little brain around the alignment procedures for everything has been a challenge lol.

I am sure glad this forum exists!

Do seek help here before making things worse.

If it ain't obvious ask. If you think it is obvious, ask anyway.

There are NO dumb questions.

We BTDT.

Well I’ve got the lathe pieces accounted for and am working on aligning the table. It appears I have a unit from 1983. model in What I’m running into is the 4 bolts that hold the table when loosened and rotating the table to try and get it parallel to the blade, it comes close, but I’d say 4 thousandths off.

I tried adjusting it per the manual, but there isn’t enough play in the brackets to get it perfectly inline with the blade. I’m thinking of lightly filing a little bit of material out of the bolt holes to give it rotation room. Something might have been slightly tweaked over the years….its only 41 years old lol.

Is that an acceptable practice given the situation?

I think this is going to be a phenomenal tool in my shop, I did a little turning with the lathe and made a crude pen blank out of some birch for a marking knife blade I had laying around. It took a lot of video watching to really wrap my brain around the capabilities of what the darn things can do. It’s quite the clever system. Although all the attachments do take up quite a bit of space. Less than standalone units though. Some wall shelves for the bandsaw etc are in order.

ArcticsShop wrote: ↑Wed Mar 06, 2024 11:23 pm Well I’ve got the lathe pieces accounted for and am working on aligning the table. It appears I have a unit from 1983. model in What I’m running into is the 4 bolts that hold the table when loosened and rotating the table to try and get it parallel to the blade, it comes close, but I’d say 4 thousandths off.

I tried adjusting it per the manual, but there isn’t enough play in the brackets to get it perfectly inline with the blade. I’m thinking of lightly filing a little bit of material out of the bolt holes to give it rotation room. Something might have been slightly tweaked over the years….its only 41 years old lol.

Is that an acceptable practice given the situation?

I shot for parallelism to within .003" and can achieve that if I persist but why. That b{.003") is far more precise than required.

ArcticsShop wrote: ↑Wed Mar 06, 2024 11:23 pm I tried adjusting it per the manual, but there isn’t enough play in the brackets to get it perfectly inline with the blade. I’m thinking of lightly filing a little bit of material out of the bolt holes to give it rotation room. Something might have been slightly tweaked over the years….its only 41 years old lol.

Is that an acceptable practice given the situation?

That seems like a last resort and you've only just begun the process. Since you used the lathe feature, how well were you able to align centers on the headstock and tailstock?

Which "V" model? 500/510?

ArcticsShop wrote: ↑Wed Mar 06, 2024 11:23 pm Well I’ve got the lathe pieces accounted for and am working on aligning the table. It appears I have a unit from 1983. model in What I’m running into is the 4 bolts that hold the table when loosened and rotating the table to try and get it parallel to the blade, it comes close, but I’d say 4 thousandths off.

I tried adjusting it per the manual, but there isn’t enough play in the brackets to get it perfectly inline with the blade. I’m thinking of lightly filing a little bit of material out of the bolt holes to give it rotation room. Something might have been slightly tweaked over the years….its only 41 years old lol.

Is that an acceptable practice given the situation?

On many early Model 510/520 systems the rear trunnion has smaller mounting holes than the front, which limits adjustment range and can cause binding. A lot of ink has been spilled on this, and not everyone here is in agreement, but solutions range from leaving it alone to drilling both holes out to full size like later production. My preference is to leave one hole small as a pivot, and drill the other one out. IIRC the 'small' holes are ~ 3/8" and the large are 1/2". It is a perfectly acceptable practice.

- David

edma194 wrote: ↑Thu Mar 07, 2024 8:41 am

ArcticsShop wrote: ↑Wed Mar 06, 2024 11:23 pm I tried adjusting it per the manual, but there isn’t enough play in the brackets to get it perfectly inline with the blade. I’m thinking of lightly filing a little bit of material out of the bolt holes to give it rotation room. Something might have been slightly tweaked over the years….its only 41 years old lol.

Is that an acceptable practice given the situation?

That seems like a last resort and you've only just begun the process. Since you used the lathe feature, how well were you able to align centers on the headstock and tailstock?

I was able to align those to as close to perfect as I could imagine getting when viewed from both the side and from above. It took a few attempts but it came together.

DLB wrote: ↑Thu Mar 07, 2024 9:19 am

ArcticsShop wrote: ↑Wed Mar 06, 2024 11:23 pm Well I’ve got the lathe pieces accounted for and am working on aligning the table. It appears I have a unit from 1983. model in What I’m running into is the 4 bolts that hold the table when loosened and rotating the table to try and get it parallel to the blade, it comes close, but I’d say 4 thousandths off.

I tried adjusting it per the manual, but there isn’t enough play in the brackets to get it perfectly inline with the blade. I’m thinking of lightly filing a little bit of material out of the bolt holes to give it rotation room. Something might have been slightly tweaked over the years….its only 41 years old lol.

Is that an acceptable practice given the situation?

On many early Model 510/520 systems the rear trunnion has smaller mounting holes than the front, which limits adjustment range and can cause binding. A lot of ink has been spilled on this, and not everyone here is in agreement, but solutions range from leaving it alone to drilling both holes out to full size like later production. My preference is to leave one hole small as a pivot, and drill the other one out. IIRC the 'small' holes are ~ 3/8" and the large are 1/2". It is a perfectly acceptable practice.

- David

I hadn’t thought about drilling it out, but that seems like a good option. I realized this morning that I slightly misrepresented the situation. The only blade I found the tooling for at the time of posting for was some appropriately 5” blade “looks like a dado blade or something, translating that lack of alignment out to a 10” blade it’s going to be double the misalignment I’m seeing here. And that’s the primary concern.

This is a photo of an identical table pulled off a YouTube video. My literature is dated from 1982-1983, but it could certainly be an older or newer unit than that-my understanding of the model change eras is imperfect at best, but I’ll venture a guess that it’s a “Mark V 500 series” if I get everything else dialed in properly and it proves worth the extra expenditure I may upgrade to a 510 or later table system.