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Moving My New Lathe

alskdjfhg

Diamond
Joined
Feb 20, 2013
Location
Houston TX
I have a tentative appointment to take measurements to move this lathe next Saturday.
http://www.practicalmachinist.com/v...story/large-belt-driven-lodge-shipley-270631/
I have never moved anything this big before (at least something that does not have its own wheels). My original plan was to just bolt short skids to the pedestals and roll it out of the shop on these Machine Skate 60 ton.

Now looking back at the pictures, I think that there are no leveling bolt holes in the pedestals, so my new plan is to use a big floor jack and lift up one end of the machine and take the pedestals off completely, then bolt the short skids directly to the bed. Then use the rented skates to roll it out of the shop to the truck . I'm planing on using a tiltbed truck to move the machine, but I'm worried that it will be too long to fit on the truck.:confused:

I would like to have this plan vetted by the more experienced and knowledgeable than I.
 
Take off the legs (those stubby little things) and use 2" or larger pipe rollers. The bottom side of the "shears" (as the bed is technically called) is likely flat and made so it will sit flat on the planer when they plane the top ways. This bottom should make a nice surface to roll against without your extra dunnage.

2" pipe works by itself for concrete floors nicely. You'll need at least three pieces of pipe perhaps 2x the width of the bed. Four would be better.

4" pipe works on 12" planking across lawns - or extremely rough concrete. Just be careful of gravity as 4" pipe will roll on any degree of incline.

And a "come along" (lever action hoist) used sideways can get you past the rough spots. You may even slide the bed on the piping WITHOUT ROLLING with a come-along.

This not hard. Remove all the clap-trap above the spindle of the lathe (drive-all or whatever is there.) This to lower the center of gravity.

Most lathes of this ilk I prefer to remove the headstock and tailstock. But this is large enough and likely stable enough against tipping so I don't think you need to go the extra step. Just use ratchet straps to hold it on the truck and keep from tipping when you're transporting.

Joe in NH
 
Thanks,
And what about dragging it up on the truck, just slide it up on the bottom of the shears?
Also I have to rotate it 90 degrees how hard would this be to do using "The Egyptian Method"?
 
Turning a load on pipe rollers is done by angling the leading rollers in the direction you want to turn the load.

To get the lathe up onto the truck, my suggestion is to use skid timbers under the bed of the lathe. Skid timbers are typically rough-cut 6 x 6's for a lathe the size of this one. The ends of the skid timbers are cut on about a 45 degree angle, making "sled runner ends". Skid timbers work well if you have an un-even bottom surface or have a machine tool on legs. They also work well at providing a "lead" to get things started up onto a tilt bed truck. The other advantage to skid timbers is they help with rollers, having that "sled runner end", the rollers find their way under the load.

Going up onto the truck bed, it becomes a question of what the rated capacity of the truck winch and wire rope are vs the weight of the lathe and condition of the bed. The classic problems in basic HS physics dealt with coefficient of friction, inclined planes, and force needed to break loose and then slide a load. Obviously, if the bed is diamond plate vs smooth steel plate on the truck, this makes a world of difference. The words of the physics teachers and later, college professors, talking about "Mu times N" are ringing in my head, altho it is some 42 years since I graduated engineering school. Mu = coefficient of friction (varies with materials and lubrication, and usually, you take the static friction coefficient). N = load, or force applied normal (perpendicular) to the sliding surface. The lathe may weigh a few tons, but on an inclined plane, you do the trig to get the force applied "normal" to the inclined plane.

I've been around quite a bit of heavy rigging in my career. One thing I learned early on is to never take a chance on a load "getting away". Some of the rigging I was involved with included sliding generator stators weighing 320 tons off railroad cars and moving them overland on greased sliding beams, using cable falls and winches. Other rigging included various jacking schemes. Hillman rollers, or "skates" that looks like "tank tracks" are OK if the surface you use them on is smooth, flat, and hard. We used Hillmans, but we always put down a runway of steel plate or channel. Hillmans can chock and lock on a small piece of rock or a stray welding rod stub and then the load starts slewing.

My own 'druthers for DIY rigging is the old Egyptian methods, including pipe rollers, and simply using greased steel plates and comealongs to slide/turn a load in a tight location. My other recommendation is to make sure you have means of controlling the load. I've seen loads on rollers seemingly want to take off on their own if there is a slight depression in the surface the rollers are on. Something like wood planks on bare ground is the sort of situation where the planks may have some spring to them or the ground compresses a little, and the load suddenly wants to take off downhill. I was taught to always provide a "holdback" to let out on as the load is pulled ahead, whether on rollers or slide plates.

Another tool which can work wonders is a 6 foot pinch bar. With a load on rollers and a pinch bar, you can steer the load once it start moving. Other tools that come in handy are:

steel flanging or setup wedges- used to get under the base of some machinery to lift it slightly off the floor when there seems like no other way and you do not have a hoist or crane handy.
sledge hammer (aka "beater") to drive the wedges
steel shims
sleever bar (aka lining bar). This is about a 30" long steel bar, forged to a pointed drift on one end, rolling pry on the other. Indispensible when moving machinery or doing any kind of erecting work.
chainsaw- great for cutting dunnage and skid timbers
Slings, load chains, shackles
comealongs. I use ratchet chain type comealongs, rather than find myself playing with load on a wire-rope "fence puller" type comealong and having to screw around with the pawls.
Wood shims

Another wild caper concerned the moving of some railroad passenger coaches a few years back. We hired a crazy house mover to do the job, cut rate price. We provided the manpower and a lot of the other equipment. He provided an engine driven hydraulic power unit and lifting rams, as well as needle beams and road dollies. We jacked up the railroad cars and slid needle beams under them, and placed pieces of dunnage as shimming and then steel sliding plates under the frames of each car. We set the needle beams on wood crib piles, and slicked the tops of the beams with Ivory soap. We then used a winch on the back of the house mover's old Mack to slide the cars sideways, one end at a time, and then jacked them and let them down on the road dollies. The Ivory Soap made a good lubricant, and since we had an audience of unknown people, we did not want to be seen slopping on grease. It did not take much to slide the railroad cars, and we did not have to use any blocks (pulley blocks) to multiply the effort of the truck winch.

As you get into the job, things will sort of solve themselves for you if you keep your wits about you. One thing is to measure your route, where the lathe has to be moved to get it to the truck, and from the truck into your shop. Check widths of doorways, check floor loading (if you are on something other than a heavy concrete slab floor poured at grade). Look for points where you might attach a comealong to pull the lathe along. It may mean putting some drilled-in anchors in the concrete floor and attaching temporary lugs (pieces of steel plate with an "ear" welded to them with a hole for a shackle). Never get your fingers or other body parts under the load unless it is supported solidly on blocking or steel shims.
Never get between the load and a wall or other tight spot when it is being moved. Never step over a chain or wire rope or sling under tension. Check to be sure turning the lathe has adequate space. If need be, make a scale drawing and make a cutout of the lathe from a file folder or similar. Play with the move of the lathe by sliding the paper cutout of the lathe on your scale drawing to be sure it can make the turns. We used to do this on heavy rigging jobs where we had a lot of turbine and generator parts crowding in a powerhouse, or had a load to move past existing plant equipment. Sounds silly, and I know a lot of the younger people will sit there and say: "Why do that, you can use "sketch up" (or some similar computer program). Well and good if you can, but I am old school, and the people I worked with were old school. Get to moving several hundred tons of powerplant equipment like a generator stator or a hydro turbine generator rotor, and you want to be real sure of where you are going and what you are doing. I tend to be what is called a "concrete learner", so playing with paper cutouts and hand drawn sketches and running numbers on any kind of rigging is what I do.

There is an old saying on this kind of work: "It's real easy to go from a hero to a zero", and a rigging job can go wrong in the blink of an eye. Egyptian methods, and keeping the center of gravity low, and taking it slow and making "worst case" assumptions are cheap insurance.

Joe Michaels
 
As for the skids to get it on the truck, do you think that I could get away with using pine or is hardwood a must?
 
Another minormajorobvious point;

Minor because it should be obvious. Major because it still happens.

If it all start to let go, RESIST the instinct to try and catch it!!!!! Get the Hell away and let it go. It's too late for you to accomplish anything but get crushed. The bulk of your work is done, as Mr. Michaels suggests; with your brain and well BEFORE anything actually moves, unintended eventualities being what they always can be.

I know it sounds obvious, but even some very smart people continue to make it worth mentioning....
 
Redline has stated what is obvious but what is the most important point. Too many people have been injured (or worse) when they tried to catch a piece of equipment or machinery that was about to get away or fall over.

Pine for the skid timbers is fine. Do not use pressure treated lumber. The stuff tends to compress and form "divots" around the rollers as the wood is so saturated with the pressure treating chemicals. Pine or fir lumber is OK. If there is a sawmill near you, perhaps they can sell you a couple of rough-cut 6 x 6's. Rough cut lumber has the advantage of being "full dimension", so a rough cut 6 x 6 is going to measure 6" x 6", instead of something less (as is the case with "dressed" or planed lumber that you buy in Home Despot or similar).

I do not know what mounting holes exist in the bottom of the lathe bed. If they are accessable, you can use heavy lag screws to tie the bed down to the skid timbers. A quick way to drive lag screws is to use an impact wrench. I have a 40 year old Industrial grade Black & Decker 1/2" electric impact wrench. It drives lag bolts in rough cut timber like no tomorrow. No predrilling needed. I use it where there is no compressed air available for an air impact wrench.

Another thing I do is bring a bucket of extra shackles and a few extra slings along. It is a case of always knowing something unforseen may arise, and having enough rigging on hand keeps the job moving.
 
Don't be or try to do anything in a hurry. When you rush, you are much more prone to fucking up! Take your time and think out every move and maneuver BEFORE you do it. It should be done like a well orchestrated chess game! If a maneuver doesn't work out right "drop back 5 and punt" think it out completely BEFORE trying a counter move. Don't let any part of it frustrate you. Frustration, rushing, lack of thought AND LACK OF PREPARATION. are the major causes of bad end results and serious injuries. TAKE THE TIME TO THINK IT THROUGH! ! ! !

As far as rigging gear, moving gear, and tools go, always remember that it is better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it! A large Johnson bar is always your friend, the heavier the better, and don't forget a load of good friends with strong backs and weak minds! (Don't skimp on the beer and pizza afterwards!) If I was you, after recruiting enough manpower, I would try to disassemble it as much as you possibly can. Smaller, lighter pieces are a lot easier (and safer) to move. Especially if you are either lacking in equipment or a greenhorn at rigging heavy awkward shit.........

When you start to rush or hurry, Murphy sneaks in behind you and kicks your ass every time! ! :codger:

Frank
 
Not lacking in equipment and I'm pretty used to moving big heavy awkward stuff.
Might have to go out and buy a set of toe or house jacks though.
I'm going to get all the "light" stuff off like the tail stock and those big steadies. Then I'm going to remove the pedestals and put it down on a set of skates and roll it to the shop door maybe using a forklift as an anchor point to attach the other end of the comealong to. Then I'm going to put short skids on both ends, and snatch block the truck's winch and suck it up on the bed.
And to get it off, I'm going to park a Case 930 behind the truck attach a come along from the butt end of the lathe to the tractor. Then release the winch (slowly) and use the come along to get help pull the lathe off if necessary.
Sound good?
 
No, its a good one, not quite a 10 ton but still healthy, and I'm going to snatch block it.
I'm very proud that I use no equipment from hazard fought tools. :D
 
These jobs appear a lot more daunting than they really are. Take a good long look at where the machine is and where you want it to be. It is a lot easier to figure things out before everything goes south. Right from the git go to the last shove into it's final place, if the setup don't look right it more than likely isn't. It may take a little longer or a bit more effort but do it right and no big problems should arise. No matter how big the machine is or how heavy, you need to be in control of what it is doing and where it is going, loose that and disaster is not too far away. Not a lot different from driving a car or riding a horse. Happy moving. :codger:
 
Turning a load on pipe rollers is done by angling the leading rollers in the direction you want to turn the load.

To get the lathe up onto the truck, my suggestion is to use skid timbers under the bed of the lathe. Skid timbers are typically rough-cut 6 x 6's for a lathe the size of this one. The ends of the skid timbers are cut on about a 45 degree angle, making "sled runner ends". Skid timbers work well if you have an un-even bottom surface or have a machine tool on legs. They also work well at providing a "lead" to get things started up onto a tilt bed truck. The other advantage to skid timbers is they help with rollers, having that "sled runner end", the rollers find their way under the load.

Going up onto the truck bed, it becomes a question of what the rated capacity of the truck winch and wire rope are vs the weight of the lathe and condition of the bed. The classic problems in basic HS physics dealt with coefficient of friction, inclined planes, and force needed to break loose and then slide a load. Obviously, if the bed is diamond plate vs smooth steel plate on the truck, this makes a world of difference. The words of the physics teachers and later, college professors, talking about "Mu times N" are ringing in my head, altho it is some 42 years since I graduated engineering school. Mu = coefficient of friction (varies with materials and lubrication, and usually, you take the static friction coefficient). N = load, or force applied normal (perpendicular) to the sliding surface. The lathe may weigh a few tons, but on an inclined plane, you do the trig to get the force applied "normal" to the inclined plane.

I've been around quite a bit of heavy rigging in my career. One thing I learned early on is to never take a chance on a load "getting away". Some of the rigging I was involved with included sliding generator stators weighing 320 tons off railroad cars and moving them overland on greased sliding beams, using cable falls and winches. Other rigging included various jacking schemes. Hillman rollers, or "skates" that looks like "tank tracks" are OK if the surface you use them on is smooth, flat, and hard. We used Hillmans, but we always put down a runway of steel plate or channel. Hillmans can chock and lock on a small piece of rock or a stray welding rod stub and then the load starts slewing.

My own 'druthers for DIY rigging is the old Egyptian methods, including pipe rollers, and simply using greased steel plates and comealongs to slide/turn a load in a tight location. My other recommendation is to make sure you have means of controlling the load. I've seen loads on rollers seemingly want to take off on their own if there is a slight depression in the surface the rollers are on. Something like wood planks on bare ground is the sort of situation where the planks may have some spring to them or the ground compresses a little, and the load suddenly wants to take off downhill. I was taught to always provide a "holdback" to let out on as the load is pulled ahead, whether on rollers or slide plates.

Another tool which can work wonders is a 6 foot pinch bar. With a load on rollers and a pinch bar, you can steer the load once it start moving. Other tools that come in handy are:

steel flanging or setup wedges- used to get under the base of some machinery to lift it slightly off the floor when there seems like no other way and you do not have a hoist or crane handy.
sledge hammer (aka "beater") to drive the wedges
steel shims
sleever bar (aka lining bar). This is about a 30" long steel bar, forged to a pointed drift on one end, rolling pry on the other. Indispensible when moving machinery or doing any kind of erecting work.
chainsaw- great for cutting dunnage and skid timbers
Slings, load chains, shackles
comealongs. I use ratchet chain type comealongs, rather than find myself playing with load on a wire-rope "fence puller" type comealong and having to screw around with the pawls.
Wood shims

Another wild caper concerned the moving of some railroad passenger coaches a few years back. We hired a crazy house mover to do the job, cut rate price. We provided the manpower and a lot of the other equipment. He provided an engine driven hydraulic power unit and lifting rams, as well as needle beams and road dollies. We jacked up the railroad cars and slid needle beams under them, and placed pieces of dunnage as shimming and then steel sliding plates under the frames of each car. We set the needle beams on wood crib piles, and slicked the tops of the beams with Ivory soap. We then used a winch on the back of the house mover's old Mack to slide the cars sideways, one end at a time, and then jacked them and let them down on the road dollies. The Ivory Soap made a good lubricant, and since we had an audience of unknown people, we did not want to be seen slopping on grease. It did not take much to slide the railroad cars, and we did not have to use any blocks (pulley blocks) to multiply the effort of the truck winch.

As you get into the job, things will sort of solve themselves for you if you keep your wits about you. One thing is to measure your route, where the lathe has to be moved to get it to the truck, and from the truck into your shop. Check widths of doorways, check floor loading (if you are on something other than a heavy concrete slab floor poured at grade). Look for points where you might attach a comealong to pull the lathe along. It may mean putting some drilled-in anchors in the concrete floor and attaching temporary lugs (pieces of steel plate with an "ear" welded to them with a hole for a shackle). Never get your fingers or other body parts under the load unless it is supported solidly on blocking or steel shims.
Never get between the load and a wall or other tight spot when it is being moved. Never step over a chain or wire rope or sling under tension. Check to be sure turning the lathe has adequate space. If need be, make a scale drawing and make a cutout of the lathe from a file folder or similar. Play with the move of the lathe by sliding the paper cutout of the lathe on your scale drawing to be sure it can make the turns. We used to do this on heavy rigging jobs where we had a lot of turbine and generator parts crowding in a powerhouse, or had a load to move past existing plant equipment. Sounds silly, and I know a lot of the younger people will sit there and say: "Why do that, you can use "sketch up" (or some similar computer program). Well and good if you can, but I am old school, and the people I worked with were old school. Get to moving several hundred tons of powerplant equipment like a generator stator or a hydro turbine generator rotor, and you want to be real sure of where you are going and what you are doing. I tend to be what is called a "concrete learner", so playing with paper cutouts and hand drawn sketches and running numbers on any kind of rigging is what I do.

There is an old saying on this kind of work: "It's real easy to go from a hero to a zero", and a rigging job can go wrong in the blink of an eye. Egyptian methods, and keeping the center of gravity low, and taking it slow and making "worst case" assumptions are cheap insurance.

Joe Michaels

When in doubt, go slow.... Accidents happen more often when people are in a hurry - take time to think about your next step before you start.

Joe is totally right with his suggestions - moving a cardboard cutout of a machine around is a very simple way to figure out interferences before you find them the hard way. In an industrial site, the building drawings are probably pretty darn accurate. Move a cutout of a machine (the same scale), and see what problems you find. Many plant layout people still like machine cutouts - they can be moved and adjusted in a review meeting very easily, and you can even make the cutouts from 3M easy-release white masking tape.

I had to lay out a crowded area on a wall for some motor controls, and I didn't know what would fit - so I did some cutouts and moved them around a flat piece of plywood on the floor. I could figure junction boxes, connectors, disconnects, and all the rest very easily.

Another way is to build an outline of a machine with 1x2's, then have several people carry it on the route and look for problems. I once figured out a route through a constructed & occupied building for a 40 ft crane beam by having two people walk the route with a tape measure pulled to 40 ft and kept taut - if they could walk through an area without hitting the side of the tape, the real beam would also fit -- and it did.
 
This is going to be a very careful and slow move, I'm not to excited to have 12,000 lbs. of lathe in free fall. :hitsthefan:

It's going to a tight squeeze in places and I'm going to have to be extremely careful not to damage any of the $500,000 brand new CNCs that surround where the lathe is.

The last time I looked at the lathe, I was amazed at how low it was, and taking the feet off should further lower the center of gravity, so if I go slow I shouldn't have any problems.
 
It's fairly common on this web site to hear how many users have raised their lathes. You mentioned that it was very low - you might want to think about raising it to a more user-friendly height. My Standard-Modern was raised 6" with some WF beams, and it makes a fantastic difference.
 
It's so low, that when I sit on the ground, I still look down at the top of the bed.
I figure that the old timers made it that low to keep the center of gravity low, because she was made in an era without forklifts, and skids and pipes were the only way to move this stuff.
 
I can't resist throwing this in: If you ever visited historic sites with houses from the 1600'- early 1800's, you may have noticed doorways and ceilings were a lot lower than what is common in homes and buildings that are built within the last 120 years or so. People were a lot shorter in the old days. Maybe that old lathe of yours was made in proportion to people of the olden days.

All kidding aside, I am sure you are right about L & S wanting to keep the center of gravity low. Think of the kind of jobs that a lathe of that capacity would handle. Imagine an odd shaped (asymmetrical) job set up on a faceplate, or perhaps something like turning a crankshaft for a steam engine or big compressor. Even with balance weights added, a higher center of gravity on the lathe would produce more vibration. L & S, in the information John Oder posted, speaks of putting the lathe on a solid foundation, but not bolting it down. Mass dampening was what it was all about. Get the lathe bed higher, and any imbalance in the work is going to have an amplified effect.

Now think of setting up a job on a faceplate or 4-jaw chuck in that lathe. Imagine reaching over the bed or up to about the 12:00 position on a job in a chuck or faceplate. If the lathe were up on some higher legs, you might need a short stepladder to set up larger diameter jobs or adjust the top jaw of a steady rest.

Look at the old "Bull of the Woods" cartoons for pictures of large swing lineshaft driven lathes in use. Those old lathes turned slow, and the feed was slower yet. On a long piece of work in a lathe like your old L & S, the operator might fix himself up a place to sleep while the lathe was taking a long cut. It was not a case of having to stand over the lathe like a person might with a 10" lathe on small work where a "long cut" might be 6" or 10" in length and they could not turn their back on it.

OTOH, I second what Bob Renz said about raising the height of a lathe. My 13" LeBlond was up on wood blocking when I got it. The previous owner had been a tall man (he was dead about 11 years when I got the lathe from his son). His son told me his late father had raised the lathe to be more comfortable when working at it. I've had that LeBlond up on skid timbers in the garage, awaiting rigging into my basement. I wired it up temporarily and ran a number of jobs in it, and I agree: the skid timbers (rough cut 4 x 4's) make a world of difference. I am only 5'-10" tall, not so tall as the lathe's last owner, but that extra 4" of height makes a world of difference to my back. I lucked into some cast iron wedge-type machinery mount/levelling pads. These will add about 3", and while they are gross overkill for mounting a 13" LeBlond Regal lathe, they will go under it. These pads have a kind of rocker arrangement to take up for any pitch in the floor as well as a wedge and jack screw to adjust for level. My basement floor has a floor drain and cleanout, with a little pitch to the concrete. The pads are going to be just the ticket.

Another piece of rigging equipment we use is the old style ratchet jacks. We have a number of them at our tourist railroad. These are mechanical jacks which are worked with a long bar. Some are "toe jacks", and come in quite handy for machinery setting jobs aside from work on the railroad. We also have some geared-screw "journal jacks" which are sort of like heavy duty bottle jacks. The toe jacks are great, but you have to have the base of the machinery up a few inches to get the toe of the jack under it. Toe jacks are generally used in pairs on opposite sides of whatever is being lifted. This keeps the load from angling in relation to the "back" of the jack which would cause the jack to kick out. At the powerplant, we were spoiled as we had every imaginable size, shape or style of Porta Power. I bought a number of what I called "button" Porta Powers. These were little tiny Porta Power rams you could hold in your palm, yet they gave 2 or 3 tons of jacking force. We had porta powers and heavier hydraulic jacking rams up to 125 tons, and we had all sorts of pullers and spreaders. At home or on our railroad, we work the old ways, and no point dreaming of bridge cranes and porta powers. We work the old way, and we get the job done. Another trick we do on the railroad is to used greased rails. When we have to move a load sideways, such as taking an 8 ton truck out from under a diesel locomotive, we put two pieces of old rail perpendicular to the track the locomotive is on, and grease those rails. We support the rails on cribs built of timber dunnage. We had previously jacked up the locomotive and truck, cribbed the locomotive frame, then jacked the truck to pull out the cribbing under it and let it down onto the slide rails. The greased rail heads make a dandy slide way, and only light comealongs are needed to slide an 8 ton locomotive truck out from under the locomotive. We had to change a traction motor, and with no back shop or other regular facilities, did it alongside the track the locomotive was sitting on. We used the airbrake compressor on the locomotive to make air for running air-powered geared screw jacks and air tools. We used a backhoe as our "shop crane" to handle the traction motor rigging in and out. Necessity is the mother of invention. As I learned a long time ago, there is often "no single right way" to do anything. Teachers and short-sighted people will often try to beat "the right way" into kids, such as how to hold a pen when learning to write, or how to handle a knife and fork. Truth to tell, as long as person writes legibly and does not gross out anyone else at the table with him, who cares how he holds his pen or handles his knife and fork ? In short, if a person uses their head and takes their time, they can figure out and do nearly anything with what they find at hand. If they fall back on "the book" or "the latest and greatest" as the "only way" or "the right way", they will put themselves at a disadvantage. As alskkdjfhg correctly notes, the oldtimers had no forklifts or handy cranes. They rigged the old way and got things done by simple means. It's all how a person looks at things and thinks. The human mind is infinite and by using it without being bounded by "hard and fast" ideas as to how a job has to be done, a person can come up with methods that work, work safely, and get the job done with what is at hand.
 
...Might have to go out and buy a set of toe or house jacks though.
...Then I'm going to remove the pedestals and put it down on a set of skates ...
Sound good?

Your plan Basically sounds good to me.
You really needn't buy a toe jack unless you just want one (nothing wrong with that). You can do all the lifting with a stout 6' or 8' pry bar and some sturdy blocks of different heights to set it on. I've moved my approx 6,000 lb L&S Powerturn several times with only pipes, planks, blocks, a come-along, and a long lever to pick up one corner at a time; working with one helper or by myself.

If I were moving you're machine I'd leave the pedestals on, they're not very tall and would be aggravating to remove and reinstall for basically no gain. By leaving them where they are and putting some wood skids under you then have 2 nice places for pipe rollers or skates. By using each end with it's own set of pipes or skates you can steer each independently to turn the whole thing easily.

Here's a picture album with some pictures of my last heavy move, might be nothing new but then again you may find an idea or two. https://picasaweb.google.com/118082...ontalBoringMachine?authuser=0&feat=directlink
That reminds me how simple and handy a pallet jack can be for moving or helping move machines. They're usually rated for about 5,500 lb which I find a little surprising and a very good thing. If you have one it may handle the tailstock end while you use pipes on the heavy headstock end.

Grigg
 
I was going to to that, but there are no holes for leveling bolts in the pedestals.
Without the holes, how am I going to attach skids to get it up a trailer?
And if I remove the feet, I have a much longer area to roll the lathe on and it lowers the center of gravity. And I can bolt the skids to the bottom of the bed (or shears for you purists).
 
Taking another look at the pictures of your lathe, I suggest you take off the handwheel on the apron. Next I would remove the cross slide screw, In fact, remove the compound and cross slide. Last, remove the the feed box down there on the end below the headstock. Of course remove the overhead countershaft, steady's and tailstock. This way, if something was to get loose and tipped over you wouldn't loose those precious untainable parts. Also those things remove will allow you to maneuver around corners without something sticking out getting caught and crunch! Another precious untainable part down the tube!

BTW-does the shop owner know how old you are?
Also, will you have other help there helping you? I'm not talking about your baby brother, either! ....

Ken
 








 
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