This subject of this post is moving the lathe.
Let me start out confessing I've never moved a machine tool, just watched a lot of YouTube of moves gone wrong to eliminate a few bad ideas up front. If you're dumb enough to repeat any of my mistakes, then don't blame me when you have to run your machine from a wheelchair. Seriously, moving machinery is potentially very dangerous for you, any helpers, bystanders, the machine, your vehicle, and buildings at both ends of the move. Don't take chances using unproven equipment or overeager "buddies" who want to help you straight to the hospital, or worse.
All that said, and for reasons of circumstance, I worked alone. Totally, completely, 100% alone except for the aforementioned pool hall customers who stopped in to pay their respects. Wasn't my first choice, just how it worked out for me, so it CAN be done. Doesn't mean it SHOULD be done this way.
As I've mentioned previously, the machine was situated in a small workroom attached to a pool hall. By "attached," I mean you walk through the front door of the pool hall and enter a small 7' x 9' vestibule. The door straight ahead goes into the pool hall. The door to your left goes into the lathe room.
All three doors are standard 3'0" doors, which is about 7" less than the depth of the lathe with the taper attachment in place. Several people from whom I sought advice recommended I move the machine assembled sans the taper attachment to fit it through the doorways. If not for the hard 90° turn within the vestibule, followed by the concrete ramp that drops 6" in 24" just outside the front door, this would have been a reasonable plan. Lift onto sturdy dollies rated to safely carry the machine's 2200 lbs and off we go. Since I did have the hard turn and murderous ramp, coupled with the fact that I had no one available to help me the day the machine had to be moved to accommodate a big pool tournament, I chose a different path. I brought the machine out in several large chunks that were manageable working alone.
To do this, I needed a few key tools:
- a stout 2-ton shop crane, aka engine hoist (<$200 at Harbor Freight, I got a barely used US-made unit for $125 on Craigslist)
- a 20' long 6,000 lb rated web sling (<$25 at Harbor Freight, no timely deal on this one, just had to buy it and glad I did)
- SAE Allen wrench set
- SAE socket set with at least one 12" extension for removing recessed bed bolts (size 7/8" for those)
- SAE wrenches for loosening headstock clamp bolts
- Moving dollies (mine were gifts from the team who moved us from Arizona to Alabama, not sure what they cost)
- Several short lengths of 4x4 lumber to serve as stickers to set things down on and still be able pull the strap out
- Big, HOLLOW GROUND flat blade screwdriver
- Deadblow hammer
- Plastic bags with a Sharpie for labeling small parts removed during disassembly
- Something to kneel on if your knees aren't as young as they used to be
In addition to all the above, the single most important tools I needed were coveralls and gloves. I knew after my first visit to the machine that it would be a nasty, slimy, dirty job and anything I wore would be the last time I wore it. The coveralls saved me from a serious case of the stinkeye from my wife.
You'll also need a vehicle capable of carrying the machine and/or its subassemblies once torn down. I was fortunate to have a friend with a nice 8' x 16' lowboy trailer and a full set of ratcheting tie-down straps to go with it.
The actual disassembly was pretty straightforward and, frankly, much easier than I anticipated. The decades of lubricants kept all the threaded fasteners in great shape. I was able to break loose everything, including the bed bolts, with a standard 3/8" drive ratchet.
Order of disassembly:
- Tailstock: slides right off the end and out to the trailer, light enough to carry without using a dolly
- Taper attachment: Remove bed clamp, remove crossfeed cover, remove crossfeed screw nut, remove two carriage bolts, and off
- Carriage: Crank to the right, suspend leadscrew with a strap on the left side of the carriage, remove leadscrew end support on right, crank/slide carriage off the end while supported by the shop crane (too heavy to lift safely unless you first separate the apron from the saddle which I chose not to do onsite), drop down to a dolly, reattach leadscrew support
- Primary drive cover (three socket head cap screws for my one-piece cover, later models have a two-piece cover with a bed rail hinge on the back)
- Banjo: loosen the big 1-1/2" retaining nut from the left end of the gearbox and slide the gear off before sliding the banjo out
- Flat belt: mine was laced so only had to pull the pin, yours may need to be cut
- Headstock: two 3/4" bolts underneath loosen the two clamps holding it to the bed; I removed them completely before lifting the headstock off with the crane as it's WAY too heavy to lift safely (others just slide the headstock off the left end of the bed once the clamps are loosened)
- Quick change gearbox and leadscrew: with the leadscrew strapped up near the gearbox, remove the single bolt below the box, followed by the three screws above it and it will swing free (the leadscrew will simply slip left out of the far end support now)
At this point, you're down to the bed sitting on the pedestal underdrive cabinet on the left and on the leg on the right side unless you have a chip pan which will also still be there. There are four 7/8" bolts holding the bed to the cabinet and four to the leg. My machine has no chip pan so it's a one-piece leg. Toolroom versions with the chip pan will have a two-piece right leg sandwiching the pan.
You can loosen the four bolts holding the bed to the pedestal at this point and it won't go anywhere. Ted (aka SBLatheMan) mentioned some of the older machines have two bolts going down into the pedestal and two bolts going up into the bed, whereas others have all four going down. Mine had all four down, but you can't see the two on the inboard side until after you've removed the headstock.
Before loosening any of the right side leg bolts, you need to have the crane rigged and tensioned to take the load. I guessed, correctly, about where to rig the bed. I took my 20' long 6,000 lb rated web strap and wrapped it three times around the two cross beams nearest the center, leaving the strap tails to meet at a point midway between them and about a foot above. The pair of crossbeams is offset to the left of the bed center and seemed to work out well for balancing the heavier headstock end of the bed casting once the right leg was loosened up.
In hindsight, if I had guessed incorrectly, it would have been helpful having a piece of wood about the same length as the distance from the bottom of the bed to the floor to support that end.
I dropped the right leg down to the floor (it's not too heavy once free), and a few pumps of the shop crane later I had the bed hanging free above the pedestal, balancing very nearly horizontally. Big sigh of relief at that point. Dropped it gingerly down onto the two dollies and I knew I was home free at that point.
After that it was a simple exercise of assembling/disassembling the legs on the shop crane about a dozen times to get sections shuttled out of the small workroom and onto the waiting trailer. Would have been handy at that point having TWO shop cranes, one inside and one outside at the trailer for loading, but just meant a few more trips back and forth to get everything loaded.
My one stop on the way home was at the car wash. There I spent $5 in quarters on high pressure spray to knock off as much of the goo as I could before mucking up my home garage floor with it.
Finally, I dragged the whole rig home to collapse in a tired heap until I could unload the next day. This entire process took me about seven hours. With a helper, it could have been cut roughly in half.
The first attached photo shows the smaller pieces in the bed of my truck. It also shows the pool cue stick support the previous owner had fabricated for sticks protruding through the spindle bore. You can also make out the sheet metal cover somebody fabricated to replace the cast cone pulley cover.
The other photo has everything moved to the trailer so I could free up the truck to run the kids to practice the next morning. This photo also shows the missing chunk of the pedestal base casting underneath where the inboard access panel cover goes.
Regrettably, I have no photos to share of the bed rigging because my smartphone turned itself into a brick two days ago and with it went most of the photos I had from the move. You'll just have to imagine a really big chunk of cast iron suspended gracefully in the air and me not squashed beneath it.
Found some of the photos I had snapped of the pool hall entry and the tight maneuvering room I had to deal with. The lathe is immediately to the right in the first of these two shots next to the access panel cover you see leaning against the wall. What you can't really see in the photos is the glass door to the workroom where the machine is located is quite literally covered in hand-written comments from customers to the recently deceased cue master. I was paranoid the whole time of accidentally breaking the glass and a mob of his former customers coming after me with pitchforks.