I Bought Woodworkings Most Dangerous Tool

19 Replies to “I Bought Woodworkings Most Dangerous Tool”

1. 13:45 Good! Don't get too comfortable around power tools. Complacency is the cause of many accidents, and a little bit of healthy respect can go a long way toward keeping all your fingers. Also, I agree with the other comments that state that the plastic is specifically meant to come apart instead of the machine rapidly disassembling itself under power. I think if you smash it with a hammer you'll find it doesn't shatter completely.

2. I guess the biggest problem is the rules and regulations for tools? When you compare Europe to the U.S.A there is a big difference.

3. That table saw scares the shit out of me, i would pick a cheap used job site table saw any day of the week before thinking about one buying one of these

4. If this thing were made by Apple or Elon Musk, it would pair perfectly with the people in the comments who are loving on it and claiming you never gave it a chance.
   You even said the pricing…and the fact that they're out of business, and it still won't dissuade them. 600 bucks in 94 for basically a 12 inch benchtop bandsaw? That's 1228.00 today. You can get a really good NEW floor model bandsaw for that, with a rolling stand so you don't have to worry about the space.
   And for 1200 bucks, you're looking at a really nice spiral cutter jointer.
   This thing was designed for the "hipsters" of the 50's who needed another hobby and thought of themselves as manly men. In todays world they would be the ones trying to get you to try a glass of coffee infused, ultra-hopped, grapefruit lager that they just finished making in the garage. Only cost them about 26 bucks a bottle after you add up all the equipment and supplies!

5. Half the danger of the tool appears to be John not wanting to read the instruction manual.

6. The Shop Smith is really good at a couple of things. The band saw is better than any of the 3 I now own for detail work. Won't re-saw, but it's small. The drill press is really good, and it is a tool that I still don't have today, which is a horizontal drill press also. Very handy. The lathe is sort of ok, and I turned more on it than my high end lathes. And the very best thing about the tool was the miter gauge with the hold down feature, which is the best safety feature I've ever seen for the band saw, even thou the table saw is a little sketchy. Worst part about the table saw was the fence, which is not capable of being permanently parallel to the blade, and is often 'fussy'.

7. That thing looks super handy and there is one on cl near me, ty for the heads up on this all in one tool ❤

8. It looks like it would be a good traveling option, but the end result of the product would probably only ever be mediocre at best due to the lack of precision control.

9. Very biased review from the first minute. John obviously didn't read any of the directions. John is just another typical arrogant YouTuber who doesn't understand what it is like to have limited space and budget.

10. it's the finger remover 2000

11. Not really sure what you were trying to prove with this video …

    – I think you managed to prove conclusively that if you review an old (in need of maintenance?) complex multi-mode machine that you straight up said you took zero time to read the manual for, that you aren’t going to get very good results with…not a surprise.

    I’m fairly sure if you reviewed a $1200 cnc with no experience and without reviewing the manual you would get pretty terrible results.

    I’m guessing this video is going for “humorous” – but it just feels like a series of cheap shots ..

    “I’ve got these turning tools that I don’t know how to use ….”
    (Turns the motor way down)
    “This feels underpowered ….”

    I enjoy most of your videos – but not this one this video is just mean college bully ..

12. You are not supposed to use a roughing gauge like that on end grain. If you get a hard catch, it can break the c
    Blade off at the collar and send that blade straight into the air at around 1500 rpm's lol

13. Please tell me you snipped the internal motor coils on this garbage before you donated it to the dumpster

14. I've had one for 40-ish years, and while it hasn't seen a huge amount of use, I've never bled on it. On the other hand, that's probably because I have always found the inherent sketchiness more than a little scary. Of the attachments, I found the bandsaw to be the most annoying; the blade is next to impossible to keep from wandering on a long cut, so it's pretty much restricted to roughing things in. I've used the belt sander for a bunch of things including resurfacing the valve covers of a 911. The jointer is pretty solid in my experience, probably the most typical-of-type of the whole sordid mess. As for the drill press … yeah, for wood, it's sorta okay. It's a hell of a lot easier to adjust the drill-press mode's speed for different materials and bits than with my tabletop unit from Harbor Freight, and the tilting table allows some fancy stuff if you're really familiar with how to make use of it. (It's actually a lot more useful in horizontal boring mode in my opinion.) The table saw is a really setup-intensive beast to get good results from on anything bigger than the width and length of the table, and even with the bigger table that you've got (the original ones from back in the '80s and before were a lot smaller), it's still not going to be as instantly useful as a portable DeWalt with a couple of rollers. As for the wood lathe, if you start by chucking the crap gouges and such, and getting some much better ones (NEVER skimp here) it's fairly solid. But a wood lathe has So Many Ways To Bite You that I can't even start to address; once again, nobody should buy one, this or any other, and expect to be doing amazing things without an experienced turner taking several hours to show them how to keep all their teeth and appendages.

    Overall, I agree with your core assessment that this is not a good tool for a beginner. In the hands of someone who's familiar with how powered equipment can reach out and mangle *everything*, it can do a lot of stuff. My older brother actually had one of the original version from back in the late '40s, and it was even sketchier because that was the era of "Guards? We Don't Need No Steenking Guards!" I think one of his sons inherited it, and his opinion of its utility was similar to mine; unless you've actually got space for all the things it half-assed subs for, it's not a horrible way to have it's capabilities available *if you know how to use them*, but if you have space and you make use of them, the real stuff's going to be a better investment. I don't use it that often, and I don't have the space, so it's okay for my purposes. (And I wish I could talk you out of that extended table setup, I never got that.)

15. The comet cub was also labeled as a home shop. Essentially a radial saw that you could remove the blade from and attach a router collet to the other end for shaping or routing. I had 3 of them a fee years back, actually worked fairly well but had an extreme level of butt pucker when that thing is spinning at 12500rpm with no guard, lol

16. These days, there is zero upside for this thing except, like John said, a lathe. I only say that because I don't turn and have no idea about costs. But I worked in a small garage for years. Many benchtop tools, stowable wall mounted workbenches, etc. This monstrosity would be much more expensive and difficult to manage in a small shop. Period. Once upon a time, was it innovative? Absolutely. But time marches on, and not everything old was better.

17. The plastic coupler is designed to be the weak link in the event you were to bind up the motor. Think of it like having 1310 universals in your Dana 40's, yeah 1350's would be bulletproof, but do you really want your axle to be the weak link?

    Have fun with your Squirrel Smith.

18. My dad had one of these Shop Smith machines. It was set up as a lathe and used twice.

19. Can you imagine the kick back from the table saw tilted like that? Holy Shit!!!

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