swatkins
Titanium
- Joined
- Jul 24, 2011
- Location
- Navasota / Whitehall Texas
About a month ago PM Member ariyama (Andy) and I were looking over the bed of his Bridgeport mill as it was being inspected during our scraping class. Andy had just gotten a price of 1250.00 to grind that table and we were trying to come up with ideas on how we could handle it ourselves. A few ideas were tossed about and I said "I sure wish we had a planer".... And that is how this whole story started
The search for a planer started soon after the class ended. Ebay, craig's list, and auctions sites were searched with nothing suitable found. I even tracked down the sister of a man that passed away 5 years ago asking if she still had his old planer! Just as things were looking bleak johnoder mentioned the gbent had a old hydraulic planer stored in a shed at a secret location somewhere south of Canada. He suggested that I contact the man and work something out, which I did.
Saturday Andy drove over from Austin and we set out on a long trip to disassemble and bring the Beast to Navasota..
We arrived at the secret location just before sunset after 12 hours of nonstop driving. The planer had been living in a machinery shed for a few years and were anxious to have a look at the machine.
Andy was standing back watching as we climbed all over the machine and remarked that any machine that could handle two men climbing all over it was a Beast! The name stuck
To protect the innocent almost all names have been changed in this story. (Andy is not an innocent) Our Host, Jose, had another Forum member, Hose B, visiting him and he was a great help in loading the beast for the return trip to Navasota. In fact without the generous help from Jose and Hose B this project would have never happened. Their knowledge, skill and hard work made a very difficult project look like child's play. Thank you gentlemen, I will forever be in your debt.
Andy and I arrived at Jose's farm very tired and without a place to sleep. It seems that softball is a very popular sport in that area and all the hotels (3) were booked. Jose's wonderful wife invited us in for dinner and soon fixed us up with reservation at a small hotel in town. The food was GREAT and soon after the meal we passed out for the night.
Sunday morning we started moving the Beast.
The Beast weighs right at 22000 pounds, is 22 feet long and 10 foot high. The bed is 32 inches wide and has a stroke of 93 inches.. We just didn't have the budget for hiring riggers and a semi to haul the machine 800 miles so we had to use our own resources. My trailers and pickup can haul 24500 pounds total GVW so we needed to break the machine up to fit my weight restrictions. This move is going to require two trips. The plan was to remove the column from the bed and transport it on the trailer while using the bed of the truck to haul the hydraulic pump assembly. I had also planned on removing the table from the bed to reduce the weight of the bed if needed. As it turned out the column was 7600 pounds and the pump weighed in at 2350 pounds which was close enough to my target weight.
Right now the first load is at my shop and we plan on making the second trip in a couple of weeks. Our second load consists of the tooling and the base of the machine. For that load I'm taking a 22' tilting bed gooseneck trailer. The planer bed is in a location where we can back right up to the end, tilt the trailer and winch the bed up using pipe rollers. The hard work was all done on the first trip where it took 6 hours to disassemble and load up.
The Beast is going to live at my shop, exactly where I haven't a clue Andy and I are going to go through the machine cleaning and repairing items as we find them.
Here are a few more pictures..
The search for a planer started soon after the class ended. Ebay, craig's list, and auctions sites were searched with nothing suitable found. I even tracked down the sister of a man that passed away 5 years ago asking if she still had his old planer! Just as things were looking bleak johnoder mentioned the gbent had a old hydraulic planer stored in a shed at a secret location somewhere south of Canada. He suggested that I contact the man and work something out, which I did.
Saturday Andy drove over from Austin and we set out on a long trip to disassemble and bring the Beast to Navasota..
We arrived at the secret location just before sunset after 12 hours of nonstop driving. The planer had been living in a machinery shed for a few years and were anxious to have a look at the machine.
Andy was standing back watching as we climbed all over the machine and remarked that any machine that could handle two men climbing all over it was a Beast! The name stuck
To protect the innocent almost all names have been changed in this story. (Andy is not an innocent) Our Host, Jose, had another Forum member, Hose B, visiting him and he was a great help in loading the beast for the return trip to Navasota. In fact without the generous help from Jose and Hose B this project would have never happened. Their knowledge, skill and hard work made a very difficult project look like child's play. Thank you gentlemen, I will forever be in your debt.
Andy and I arrived at Jose's farm very tired and without a place to sleep. It seems that softball is a very popular sport in that area and all the hotels (3) were booked. Jose's wonderful wife invited us in for dinner and soon fixed us up with reservation at a small hotel in town. The food was GREAT and soon after the meal we passed out for the night.
Sunday morning we started moving the Beast.
The Beast weighs right at 22000 pounds, is 22 feet long and 10 foot high. The bed is 32 inches wide and has a stroke of 93 inches.. We just didn't have the budget for hiring riggers and a semi to haul the machine 800 miles so we had to use our own resources. My trailers and pickup can haul 24500 pounds total GVW so we needed to break the machine up to fit my weight restrictions. This move is going to require two trips. The plan was to remove the column from the bed and transport it on the trailer while using the bed of the truck to haul the hydraulic pump assembly. I had also planned on removing the table from the bed to reduce the weight of the bed if needed. As it turned out the column was 7600 pounds and the pump weighed in at 2350 pounds which was close enough to my target weight.
Right now the first load is at my shop and we plan on making the second trip in a couple of weeks. Our second load consists of the tooling and the base of the machine. For that load I'm taking a 22' tilting bed gooseneck trailer. The planer bed is in a location where we can back right up to the end, tilt the trailer and winch the bed up using pipe rollers. The hard work was all done on the first trip where it took 6 hours to disassemble and load up.
The Beast is going to live at my shop, exactly where I haven't a clue Andy and I are going to go through the machine cleaning and repairing items as we find them.
Here are a few more pictures..
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