They are great tools. And well built and versatile.
I’m going on 73 years old and I actually learned my early woodworking skills on my grandfather’s shopsmith (which actually wasn’t made by Shopsmith, but by the Magna Corporation. I was probably 10 years old. When my Dad started buying power tools for his new home in 1953, he purchased a new table saw, a used jointer and moved my Grandfatber’s Shopsmith into HIS garage. Used it mainly as a drill press and wood lathe. By my junior and senior high school years, I was regularly using my Dad’s woodworking tools and gaining more confidence in using them. I never liked the table saw configuration and used the true table saw for this work. When I bought my home in 1974, I started buying my own stuff picking up new and used machinery. In 1978, I purchased the Shopsmith I still have now. My garage is only 20 X 20, so I don’t have a lot of space to spare. We don’t “garage” our vehicles, so that helps. My shop is BOTH for wood and metal. 12 X 36 Clausing metal lathe, Enco 8 X 42 milling machine, Craftsman Digital Radial Arm saw and cabinet. I believe in having the correct tool to do the job. The Shopsmith helps by being able to do disc sanding, wood lathe work and having a nice capacity drill press. Also nice to have a small Shopsmith bandsaw available for intricate cutting. I find I can make the tool changes without a lot of trouble. Like Devon said, you have to do a little planning when making your project to avoid repeating some operations. Because I was a tool and die journeyman, I believed in making fixtures to help in repetitive operations and to increase accuracy. The ONE tool I always wanted and ALMOST bought was a CNC mill. I have a line on a Haas CNC toolroom mill right now. I have MasterCam running in my PC now and it is a short run out to the garage to run an RS232 cable out to the mill and run my toolpaths directly from my computer. This is 4-axis so I should be able to literally make anything I need. So far I have been able to build a Gene Allen 1-1/2" scale ten-wheeler steam engine, eight 1-1/2" scale Baldwin electrics and a half dozen pieces of rolling stock for my trains. BUT my Shopsmith was the start of all this. You have to start somewhere. You can probably find some really excellent refurbished Shopsmiths around, but they can get a little pricey. I think the lowend Shopsmith now is the 500 MK V at around $3000. The next up from that is the 510 Mk V at $3400. These have the standard size tables. The models up from these have larger, more substandial tables and more horsepower. The 520 Mk V goes for about $3700. The top-of-the-line Shopsmith now is the Mk 7, Power Pro with digital variable reluctance and has horsepower from 1-3/4 (120 volts) to 2 h.p. at 220 volts for about $4100.