Shopsmith (the company) up for sale or closing operations after 70 years

[LCHIEN]

https://www.shopsmith.com/?fbclid=IwdGRjcANFSWBjbGNrA0VJNmV4dG4DYWVtAjExAAEe 5DnTlH45u5FFEu3KcSrdsgT5yIEtB-7V7aURIaJRoecCKsQqsx0pBnuO3k0_aem_t5_xae-wY001i7NnbrnrVQ

[LCHIEN]

I know there are many Shopsmith fans out there.



I'm not sure there are enough customers out there to keep the company going.
The concept of the all in one tool seems to be dated. It sure looks that way to potential tool buyers.
Many shop smith owners are now older folks (mostly men, I imagine) who are reaching retirement age or already passed. There are lots of used machines on the market and since they have made Limited changes to the classic design used machines may well trump new. The saws are rugged and sturdy, designs from the 1950s so the call for repair parts is probably served by cannibalizing older machines not new sales.
They have upgraded the machine some, from the original 10ER, classic Mark V and a Mark 7 with electronic controls. Three basic models in 70 years.
It seems unlikely that there would be engineering resources for a new, improved model to sell in a fast paced market given things like Sawstop mechanisms as potential legal requirements. Can you imagine Sawstop fitted to this thing and a retrofit kit?

And I myself can hardly imagine dealing with a 5-in-one tool - lathe, sander, horizontal drill, table saw that converts to s drill press because I am often going back and forth between two or more machines.

For those interested, the current debt is $920,000
On September 26, 2025 Shopsmith L.P. terminated all office staff and ceased operations. Lenders plan to sell all assets to satisfy unpaid debt of $920,000.

[twistsol]

I saw this earlier this weekend. It is unfortunate as the ShopSmith is a unique tool. The current owner puchased the company just a couple of years ago and did a lot with it, updating the supply chain and improving order processing etc.

i personally own three ShopSmiths, Two Mark V 520s and a 1949 10ER.

[tfischer]

I popped back into this site for the first time in a long while and this was the first post I found. Once upon a time I was really interested in a ShopSmith. I got talked out of it and bought a BT3100 (and other tools) instead. I remember going to the fair and watching the demo many times. I might even have the "rose" they gave out as part of the bandsaw demo around somewhere.

I have a friend who has a Shopsmith and loves it. He has a tiny shop in a small room in his basement and the machine works well for that. That said I think he's a rare breed among "younger" people and even he is in his upper 40s if not lower 50s now.

I'd love to see this company continue, or at the very least be acquired buy an existing brand that keeps the product alive. I think there's a niche for it, but perhaps not a large enough niche.

As Loring points out there are a LOT of these on the used market. I was always told that if I wanted one, never buy new. That's the danger of making the same product for decades I guess.

LIke so many other things, times have changed. There was a time when practically even guy puttered around in the garage for fun. This sort of device, or a radial arm saw, served that market well. Now, most people don't do woodworking, and those that do are either going to buy a full-on shop of quality equipment, or something a lot cheaper than a Shopsmith.

It's sad to see such a venerable brand leave us, if that's the case. But this wouldn't be the first time that the brand died and was revived.

-Tim

[LCHIEN]

Shopsmith has died and been revived several times already 1966, 2009, 2023. You can read about it in the Wikipedia article on Shopsmith.
You only need $920,000 to save the company... but be prepared for operating expenses and slow income to follow.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopsmith

[tfischer]

I'm not sure I knew abaout the 2009 one. I remember reading about the 1966 one where someone later on pretty much found the whole factory intact and revved it back up.

[cwsmith]

My local Lowe's used to Shopsmith demonstration several times a year, back 15 to 20 years ago, and I enjoyed watching them. Like their occasional TV demos back in the 60's (IIRC). But I've never known anyone who actually owned one.

While I thought they were sort of 'neat', I always thought that the time it took to tear down and set up for another operation was too time consuming, and what if I needed to return to the operation I just change from, because I forgot to machine another piece for whatever project I was working on. The only advantage in my little brain, was that I'd have a particular tool that I wouldn't normally use with my individual tool purchases, like a lathe.

I prefer to have my shop set up with individual work stations, like my BT3100 table saw for sheet work, a floor-standing drill press, my RAS for cross-cuts, a small band saw, router table, planer, jointer, and various hand-held tools. That way I can move from tool to tool and back again, without having change the setups.

The other factor of course is just the market itself. I think fewer and fewer people are interested in doing things, especially crafts, for themselves. We live in the age of cell phones and I think a majority of people have their brains stuck there.

CWS

[capncarl]

I hate to see the brand go. As a youngster I remember their demonstrations set up in Sears, before they migrated to a Mall. 10 years ago I purchased a couple of MkVs to scavenge parts for building my own sanding station, where I cut up the head end of the lathe and used the Shopsmith headstock mounted to a cart contraption of my own design for a disc type sander of sorts. It uses a 5” flexable H&L bowl turning spindle and lots and lots of dust control to carve my Tiny Trees and Tiny Mushrooms. The Shopsmiths I have run at around 2000 rpm for hundreds of hours in this sanding station, requiring several total rebuilds each. I’m very familiar with the variable speed belt drives on this machine as it is just a spin off a Reeves variable speed reducer common in industrial applications prior to inverters. Last year I replaced the headstock with an shopsmith Power Pro and promptly wore it out. I’m guessing in Shopsmiths haste to get an inverter drive on the market they threw it together without thinking about durability. It uses a 2 belt drive system off the motor with a really dinky bearings.
The ShopSmith always had a premium price but the price of the PowerPro, It’ll take your breath away.
I think the decline of ShopSmith likens the BT3, it has outlived its popularity in the buying public.

[LCHIEN]

BT3 in two basic models lasted about 12 years; Shopsmith in what, 3 basic models, lasted about 70 years.

[Jim Frye]

Ryobi's BT3xx models did some 600,000 units during its marketing life cycle. I bought an early build BT3000 in February of 1993 and it's been the best $500 I ever spent, for anything. The early production BT3100 sits unused under the BT3000.

[LCHIEN]

I wonder how many units of Shopsmith were sold?

Oh, I asked AI and they estimate 600,000 over 65 years... Similar in number to the BT3 but over a longer timespan

Short answer: About 600,000 Shopsmith multipurpose machines (i.e. roughly “over a half-million”) — that’s the figure most trade sources and regulatory reports use for the brand’s ~65–70 year history.
Woodshop News Magazine
+1

Quick context: a 2018 Woodshop News piece says “many of the more than 600,000 units sold over the last 65 years,” and U.S. CPSC analyses have used the same ~600k estimate when discussing the machine in market studies. Some forum posts or promotional blurbs occasionally quote larger, less substantiated totals (e.g., “over a million”), so you’ll see variations — but the best-documented, commonly cited figure is ~600,000 units.

So I asked CHatGPT how many BT3 were sold, and they quoted me as a source!

I couldn’t find any credible source with sales numbers specifically for the Ryobi BT300, BT3100, Craftsman 22911, or 28129 “clone” saw-models.

What I did find:

According to a BT3 FAQ on SawdustZone, Ryobi sold over 600,000 BT3000 units.
sawdustzone.org

The FAQ also states that the BT3000 was replaced by the BT3100 around 2002.
sawdustzone.org

The BT3 FAQ further notes that several Craftsman models were simply variants/branding of the BT3x00 line (including 22811, 21829 etc.)
sawdustzone.org

But no breakdown by model (BT300 vs BT3100 vs the Craftsman numbers) was available in what I found.

[Jim Frye]

it is sad to see a quality brand disappear. I was a small part of the TroyBilt closure and sale to MTD. I project managed the transfer of TroyBilt's data center from NY to MTD's outside of Cleveland under contract with IBM. The TroyBilt factory was straight out of the early 1900s. Walking around their campus was like going back in time.

[capncarl]

I didn’t catch the news about ShopSmith shutting down, just saw it on this site. It kinda put me in panic mode since I use my Shop Smith Power Pro almost daily for hours on end. I do have a rebuilt Mk5 powerhead as a backup unit. I probably sell 15-20 Tiny Trees and Tiny Mushrooms every month, with each taking from 1 hour to 3 hours of sanding on the Shopsmith. I do keep spare parts for these powerheads so I better start shopping around while they are available. EBay has a never used Power Pro for sale @ $1,600. Kinda steep.

[LCHIEN]

i personally own three ShopSmiths, Two Mark V 520s and a 1949 10ER.

That solves the problem of breaking down a setup only to have to use it again when swapping tool modes.

Looking at the user manual it appears you have to raise and lower the table to adjust TS cutting depth; and if making a crosscut or other cut needing support you also have to adjust the platform on the right to match the height. A frequently adjustable outfeed table height is also a need.

[twistsol]

What is better at solving that problem is properly planning your work steps and really the longest changeover is from table saw to something else. None of the changes take more than a minute once you've done it a few times

The Shopsmith's worst function is by far the table saw. The blade is in a fixed position and the table lowers and raises and tilts around the blade with all pains that causes. The only time I've used the table saw function was while building my shop when most of my tools were still in storage.

The second worst function is the lathe if you are turning anything large. With a min speed of 700 RPM you end up chasing the machine around the shop until it is balanced.

The drill press and horizontal boring which were the main reasons I bought mine is are the shining star of this machine. The whole machine is a bunch of compromises

When introduced in the late 1940's, the electric motor was 1/3 the cost of machine so it made sense to have one motor share functions. Those economics went away decades ago and the only real selling point is now "a full woodshop in the space of a bicycle". This should appeal to the new generation of "makers" but $5k is a tough pill to swallow for the dew things you don't do with CNC or laser cutters.

I like my ShopSmiths, but nostalgia for a machine that has outlived its reason for existing isn't a solid marketing plan. It is sad to see the company go, but it is time.

[LCHIEN]

Twistsol makes some good points in his comment to the previous post.

The Shopsmith central tenet, one motor shared between multiple configurable machines, made sense when motors, esp. variable speed ones, were expensive components. But modern manufacturing has made a motor per tool, not that expensive relatively speaking.
And the compromise of a single motor, and multiple configurable platforms extracts a compromise of less convenience and masters of none.

So on the side of the SHopsmith, you have compact size, shared motor cost
and on the side of what everyone else has done, is more convenience and capacity and feature upgrade flexibility.

[JamesDean19]

This is the brand bandsaw I had! This is sad.