Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Moving the Lathe

OK, I finally got around to a blog entry about moving the new (to me) lathe. As luck would have it, my wife's uncle bought this lathe in 1984 and took very good care of it. It came to us as part of his estate. All I had to do was go get it. No small task, but not a huge one either.

Here's the lathe sitting in the basement where it's been since it was new. It's a 5x25 lathe with a mill attached so the cross slide can be used for both. Lucky for me it runs on 110 single phase current.





The main challenge was going to be getting the lathe off it's stand as even stripped the main part weighted over 300 pounds and you can't go lifting it by just any old piece of metal that's sticking out lest you bend it.

We drilled a hole in the floor joist above it and used my old climbing gear webbing to make a point to attache the comealong to. Another piece of webbing thru the casting between the ways and up we go.

We set it down on a dolly and using a strap under the low end so two of us could get a better lift on it bumped it up the stairs one step at a time. "1-2-3-Heave!" is how it got to the top of the stairs.






Into the rented truck with the lathe parts and all it's tooling. It took the rest of that day and the whole next day (8-8:30) to arrive in Cape Coral.






No basement here, so an engine hoist was just the ticket. I unloaded the smaller bits, including the stand by hand or with a dolly. Then the hoist lifted the lathe right out of the truck and we pushed it over to the stand and placed it carefully over the bolt holes.





And here it is, in place in it's new home.


It is a bit of a challenge to find oil and parts for it way down here in vacation land. Maybe in Tampa it would be easier. Web shopping is the greatest!