Shopsmith Forums

I’m embarrassed to say that I allowed my 20 year old Mark V sheaves to freeze up and could no longer change speeds. But between posts on this forum and Jacob Anderson’s videos I was able to dismantle the headstock and put it back into working order. In doing so, however, I discovered that the roll pin that fits through the hole in the control sheave bearing button was missing and I couldn’t reattach the speed control loop. I ordered a new roll pin from Shopsmith but decided to make a temporary fix while waiting for the new pin. It turns out that the plastic ink reservoir in an old ballpoint pen had the perfect inside and outside diameters and it worked like a champ! Here are a couple of pictures.

Inky!

Cool solution. Ball point pen tubes have a lot of uses, some I don't want to mention here or admit knowing about, but this is a good one.

A proper sized roll pin would be available from a local hardware store. If only SS would provide standard hardware descriptions like they did a half century ago.