Lathe Move

Like I said earlier, I am a Jack of All Trades.  I like old tools and keeping them in service versus sending them to the scrap pile.  Recently an old friend from college contacted me from Michigan because he needed some logistical support for a potential auction purchase.  He was looking at a 1948 Pacesetter 20x48 lathe.  The thing was huge, he was concerned about moving it from Chicago to his home, I told him I would help him as much as I could.  He won the auction for $306.....it is worth more to the scrap yard.  Most home size shops have no use for a machine this large, but if you have the space, bigger is usually better.  He did a bunch of research both before and after the auction closed.  He knew it weighed just under 10,000 pounds and had the rough dimensions.  He rented a flatbed truck to transport it with.  The Dept of Water had to get it out of the building and onto the truck for him.  That was the hard and slow part of the job.  There were also some broken parts involved.  It took 2 small fork trucks to lift/drag it from storage.  Funny to see 2 fork trucks with their back wheels off the ground, lifting it so it could be spun 90 degrees.  It almost got dumped on it's side in the process.  4 hours later it was out of the garage and the crane pulled up.  It wasn't pretty, but a 2" bar was placed thru the headstock for rigging locations and a strap was wrapped around the bed casting near the tailstock.  The lift wasn't straight, but once it was off the ground we just went for it and put it on the truck.

It took a couple small adjustments to even up the load on the truck and the "other guys" all left us alone to wrap and strap.  It took about 4 hours to secure the machine and get it wrapped for its 6 hour drive thru rain, snow and road salt.  A bunch of that time was spent securing all the tooling and attachments (didn't realize they were coming as part of the auction with the base machine) to the flatbed.  We screwed lagging around the base to keep it from sliding, ran binder chains front and rear, and straps over the bed of the machine.  After it was all wrapped up, we added 2 more straps over the top of the headstock and tailstock.  Brian left around 6 pm for Michigan and arrived at his destination around midnight, safe and sound.  They unloaded the next day in an hour.....