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Moving a South Bend Heavy 10

ncbuckeye

Plastic
Joined
Mar 8, 2017
lot_03.jpg

First post, first lathe. Picked this up at an auction in NC. CL8187zb bed length 3.5 serial number 20575 R. Flame Hardened bed.

I read through the Heavy 10 moving threads but have a question since I didn't see it covered. Since they are notoriously top heavy according to posts, I was going to attach a couple of 4x4's lag bolted using the through holes from front to back and make them stick out a foot for stabilization and to get it up for the forklift. Once up off the floor, the rigger can put it on my trailer with a forklift and I have a forklift quick attach for my Kubota (1600 lbs + capacity).

The question is, can the forks just lift the lathe from below the cabinet with no damage to the cabinet? I've seen where it's pretty heavy duty sheet metal according to comments but I didn't get a chance to check the thickness of the cabinet and I wont have access to the machine till Friday right before I have to load it.

Plan B is to first run 4x4's along the front and back (parallel to the front) bolted or lagged to the frame, then put 2 4x4's from front to rear at the ends for stabilizers and to get it up off the floor. Then the lifting would be done under the 4x4's and not on the cabinet but they'd be flush with the bottom.

Thanks!
 
First I'm going to give you an advice. Don't tell anyone here how much you paid for it because they will trash you for not paying enough to the auctioneer.
Now about the move. I just purchased SBL CL0117C at auction also. Like swatkins said the safest way is to put a strap and lift the lathe with forks over the machine but if the lift truck operator knows what he is doing then you will be safe with forks under cabinet also. What we did is sling strap through the bed as close to spindle as possible and lift truck operator lift the machine high enough to clear my trailer. One guy was holding machine on the opposite side of spindle to balance it. Then I just backed up the trailer under the machine and he lowers it on my trailer. Basically I don't want him to drive around with my machine hanging on his forks.
BTW great lathe. Hopefully it will be fully functioning.
 
I hoisted mine out of my truck basically the same way, using slings and a chainfall. Balance point is pretty much under the spindle nose. Don't run the slings across any handles and use some blocks of wood to keep it off the lead screw if needed.
 
Thanks for all the advice guys. I'll get a feel for the rigger and see what he says too and make a decision then. He already moved about 10 lathes out of there so he'll be in good practice. :-)

I did test it out pretty good before I bought it, all the feeds worked. A couple chipped teeth on the head gears and some backlash in the cross feed but other than that seemed pretty good.
 
First I'm going to give you an advice. Don't tell anyone here how much you paid for it because they will trash you for not paying enough to the auctioneer.

Just don't gloat about how your screwing your boss out of decent tooling for your benefit. That's what you did.

Auctions have nothing to do with deceit.
nono.gif
 
traditional-tools wrote: "Auctions have nothing to do with deceit. "
Sadly, lots of stories on here to the contrary, but that's a bit OT.

To the OP -- agree with the chorus of 'lift from above'. Balance issues can be addressed with a ratchet strap from the heavy end to the sling point, to replace a "human in the drop zone" balance helper. Your stabilization timbers will help steady things as you go down the road, though. Through-bolting them is best, with counterbored holes on the bottom side, so they can't roll in emergency braking/maneuvering. Take it slow in the loading and you'll be fine. Minimum 2" straps for hold-downs -- no 1" baby straps.

Chip
 
traditional-tools wrote: "Auctions have nothing to do with deceit. "
Sadly, lots of stories on here to the contrary, but that's a bit OT.

Sadly, "auction" has become slightly abused with the advent of ebay. But what I was pointing out was that there is nothing wrong with getting a great deal on equipment, I've got some of what I consider great deal myself...others I've paid fair value on machines I wanted.

Anyway, let's let this die, Pysiek posted a wonderful lathe he got at auction in another thread. Looks very nice, IMO. He should focus on that one and not get castironitus...another problem that many of us have when collecting machines...myself included.

To the OP -- agree with the chorus of 'lift from above'. Balance issues can be addressed with a ratchet strap from the heavy end to the sling point, to replace a "human in the drop zone" balance helper. Your stabilization timbers will help steady things as you go down the road, though. Through-bolting them is best, with counterbored holes on the bottom side, so they can't roll in emergency braking/maneuvering. Take it slow in the loading and you'll be fine. Minimum 2" straps for hold-downs -- no 1" baby straps.

I have a Heavy 10 I've moved around my yard and garage, and I've felt comfortable putting forks under the cabinet, but that was on a tube leg frame. I also used slings and hoisted from the top, and that works well also. I've also taken the lathe off the cabinet and moved it and believe it or not, it's way more off balanced when off the cabinet, IMO. I can muscle the cabinet around my shed on concrete floor by myself.

A forklift is always my first choice, but if you added some timber along the bottom you could slide it on pipes pretty easy. These machines are so light that as long as you don't tip it over, there is probably no best way, as there are so many ways to skin this cat.

It is always safe to go from the top with slings under the entire machine if possible.
 
Well, thanks to all the great advice I don't think this could have been easier. They pulled it out of the toolroom with the forks under the bed, but they strapped it to put in the trailer. He was at first going to put the strap around the bed but I talked him out of that when i saw it might put a lot of pressure on the lead screw. He didn't seem to think it would hurt it but I may not have lifted a lathe before but I knew that was a bad idea. He lifted it from one of the cross pieces inside the bed. It was a tad off balance but was fine. When I got it home I used 2 of the cross pieces and it was perfectly balanced.

I had decided before I got there I was going to heed the advice from here, but after getting a closer look at the base, my proposed method would have never worked anyway. You can get the forks underneath the bottom front without putting it on blocks but the back of the cabinet goes all the way to the floor blocking you from picking it up level. You'd have to play a bunch of games with some wood blocks to level it out.


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Congrats, "no excitement" is always good. If you need a mill or another lathe to work on your lathe, and you're nearby, feel free to PM. That's a heavy-duty grinder you have there for ballast. Cheers, Charles

Thanks Charles, I may take you up on that. I'm not far from Apex. Yeah, the grinder is a beast. It's a Hammond model OK-10. The specs say it weighs 400 lbs.
 








 
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