Wednesday, June 20, 2007

New Toy

When I was a child, I can remember my dad shutting himself away in his workshop and hearing the hum and whine of his Shopsmith. For those who don't know, a Shopsmith is basically a 6-foot bench with various sawing, cutting, grinding, and drilling attachments that can be switched out, depending on your needs.

Recently, Swanny Sr. asked me if I'd be interested to taking it off his hands. At first, I thought, "What the hell am I going to do with it? More importantly, where the hell am I going to put it?" But, following our successful garage sale (see previous posts), I now have plenty of room in my garage. I told Swanny Sr. yes, and I recently made a quick trip to pick up the Shopsmith.

Turns out, Swanny Sr. either neglected to mention this, or I just didn't pick up on it, but...

...it was in pieces. Not just some pieces; there have to be a hundred or so pieces. Big, small, easily identifiable, some not so much.


But, not to fear, I have the original owner's manual. However, the type is small and the pictures are not very clear. This is all probably due to the copyright date being 1954. That's right, this thing is 53 years old.


I know what you're thinking. "Swanny, you could have spent a couple hundred bucks and picked up a couple of good chop/table saws." That's probably true, but I've got some memories associated with this thing. I mean, Swanny Sr. built a wooden Space Shuttle (with Solid Rocket Boosters and External Fuel Tank) for me with this Shopsmith. Not only that, but I can only imagine how cool it'll be if I can get this thing up and running. Maybe I'll be able to do some cool things with it for Peanut when she gets a little older.



That'd be pretty cool.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't know if Swanny Sr. told you, but I bought the Shopsmith in about 1955 when we had lived
in Granma Lena Swanson's house. I made many projects with that machine, including the back porch on our house on 28th AV.
When we moved to an apartment, I gave it to him.

Why in the hell did he take it apart?

I also cut of the end of my finger on the jointer! So be carefull.

ggpa

Anonymous said...

WOW. It's a third generation tool then!
:)

The Mrs. said...

That looks like something right up The General's alley. Although I'm not sure he'd have the patience to put it all back together again...can't wait to see your first creation!

Anonymous said...

Did Swanny Sr. give you all of the accessories, tools etc?

ggpa