Chiptosser:
I am glad you are going to be schlepping the lathe home. The name of the game in moving machine tools as in most all else, is safety first. Here are a few things to bear in mind:
1. Keep the center of gravity as low as possible and as close to the centerline of the lathe as possible. To do this, remove/dismount the Cullman Wheel assembly in its entirety. The bracket and motor, and all else set up high, as well as to the rear of the lathe make the lathe top-heavy and prone to tipping when moved.
2. Do not try to be a hero, no matter how often you hit the gym or similar. A comealong or light chain hoist and a hunk of pipe or timber spanning roof trusses in a garage can be a real lifesaver for removing the motor, drive, and bracket from the lathe.
3. My own 'druthers is to put machine tools on skids before moving them. Skids are pieces of 4 x4 or 6 x 6 timber, with the ends cut at about 45 degrees to form what I call 'sled runners'. Skids make moving a machine tool on pipe rollers a real easy exercise. Skids also minimize the danger of breaking a cast iron leg on the machine tool during moving. Cut the skids from 4 x 4's or 6 x 6's and use lag screws to fasten the pads at the base of the legs to the skid timbers. Skids make moving a machine tool a whole lot easier than dealing with four individual feet on the bottoms of cast iron legs. Also makes the machine tool a whole lot more stable during the move.
4. Simple methods will work well for moving your lathe. Pipe rollers are plenty good to move the lathe on level surfaces. If the ground or pavement is uneven a sheet or two of plywood works wonders for moves with rollers, as do a couple of wood planks. The plywood spreads the load and the planks create a 'runway' for the rollers.
5. Do not get the idea of putting the lathe up on dollies or similar or using the rollers to get it up onto the trailer. As I like to say about moving machinery up or down inclined surfaces: "Friction is your friend". It is all too easy to have a load on rollers or on dollies get away on an incline and it can happen in the blink o an eye. To get the lathe up onto the trailer, a comealong to drag the lathe on its skids up a ramp (planks ? tailgate with plywood if a steel mesh tailgate ?) is plenty good enough. Similarly, to let the lathe down off the trailer, use two comealongs: one to hold back, and one to drag it down the ramp.
6. In tight quarters, if you have to turn the lathe to get it into place, some smooth plywood and Ivory soap are an old trick. Put some smooth plywood down on the floor and some pieces of smooth plywood with cleats fasted to them under the skids. The cleats keep the plywood pieces in place relative to the skid timbers. Some Ivory soap is a dandy lubricant and an old time rigger's trick used very often. I've used it a number of times. Another approach is to lay down some pieces of any kind of smooth steel such as square tube, or heavy flat bar, put the Ivory soap to them, and drag the lathe and turn it where it needs to go.
7. In a basement, if you have no place to hang a chainfall or comealong and need to re-install the Cullman Wheel drive:
drill a hole thru two consecutive floor joists in the overhead, the closer to a carrying girder or plate in your house framing, the better. This hole should be large
enough to pass a 3/4" or 1" diameter steel pipe thru, with a little clearance to wiggle the pipe as needed. Drill the holes (or use a hole saw) on the horizontal '
centerline of the joists, known in Engineering as the 'neutral axis'. Slide a pipe thru the holes and hang a chainfall or comealong and you have means to hoist up
the Cullman Wheel drive with its heavy cast iron bracket.
8. When you do go to moving the lathe, make sure to position the carriage about midway on the bed and tailstock towards the further end of the bed. This moves the center of gravity away from the headstock end of the lathe. Also make sure you have clamped the tailstock solidly to the bed and locked the carriage in place with the
binder screw. You do not need either the carriage of the tailstock deciding to slide along the bed while you are moving the lathe.
9. Bring some pieces of soft pine lumber or some pieces of old fire hose to protect the bedways and other machined parts when you bind the lathe onto the trailer. Protect machined surfaces with 'softeners' so slings and chains do not rub or cut into them.
10. I use a few bars of varying lengths to move machinery. A 30" long ironworker's 'sleever' bar, having a pointed drift on one end and a pry on the other is often all I need to move machinery of the size of your lathe. I also bring what are called 'setup' of 'flanging wedges'. These are forged steel heat treated wedges made by Armstrong. I drive them between machinery bases and the floor to get things 'started', when I can't get a pinch bar or jack under a machinery base. I also bring a milk crate filled with shims cut from plywood and steel plate or steel flat bar. As soon as I get a little lift on a machinery base with the wedges, I stick shims under it.
NEVER, EVER stick your fingers or toes or any other body parts under machinery that is up on pinch bars, jacks, or hoisting equipment. Things can come down with a sudden bang and lop off anything like fingers and toes.
11. I do not know what your preference in footwear is. All to often, people seem to show up for work around machinery (or moving it) in Nikes or similar. Wear at least a pair of leather work boots with a good sole, and steel safety toes are preferable.
12. Bring a broom and shovel and some 'speedy dry' or cat litter with you. Sweep the floor along your route that the lathe will be moved out of or into place. Cat litter works wonder for cleaning up spilled oil. Even a bit of gravel or a stray nail or 1/4" nut can chock rollers when moving machinery along and make things got to shit in a hurry. Clean the routes.
13. Never get yourself in a 'pinch point' or tight spot between the load an immovable object like a wall, column, parked vehicle or another hunk of machinery.
14. have another person with you and go over the job so both of you understand what needs to be done and how it is going to happen. Weekend warriors who claim to workout at the gym and are more intent on drinking beer and eating pizza are not whom you need along on the move. Preferably, someone who 'knows how to work' and won't turn the job into a scene from the 'Three Stooges' is whom you need on hand. Sometimes 'no help is better than the help offered' with some people.
15. If the trailer has a tilt bed or beaver tail, for unloading, with the lathe on skids, you may not need a ramp at all. As I wrote, above, friction is your friend. Use two comealongs: one to hold back and control the load as it is slid off the trailer, and one to drag it off. Make sure of where you fix the comealongs (known as 'deadmen'). A comealong to hold back and control the load can be made up off the tongue of the trailer, and if you need something solid to pull the load down and off the trailer, another vehicle's hitch, or a solid part of the building can be used. DO not do anything like putting a sling or chain around a column in a garage or building to pull off of. In the worst case, putting a few wedge-bolt type concrete anchors in a garage floor slab and bolting a piece of angle iron with a hole for a shackle is plenty good for this sort of thing. Afterwards, an angle grinder and cutoff wheel take care of the anchor bolts and a little 'waterplug cement' on top of the bolts in the bolt holes finishes the restoration.
Thing about each move, make sketches, take measurements... if need be, make a scale drawing of the buildings and the route the lathe has to go on to get to its new location. Cut a piece of cardboard or file folder to the scaled size of the lathe in plan view and move it over the route if you have concerns as to tight turns.
I am sure you will be fine with the moving of the lathe, and a bit of 'head work' done up front, and coming to the move with everything you can remotely think of is not a bad idea. Upstate, we get rough sawn timbers from the local sawmill for skidding machinery, and we all own and use chainsaws. I bring an electric impact wrench for driving lag screws as I do not like to spend too much time hunkered down with a ratchet wrench. I bring shackles, chains, slings, comealongs, wedges, sledges, bars, shims, a box of tools, pinch bars, rollers, drill and bits, electric impact gun, lag screws and steel plate washers, and anything else that seems remotely needed to this sort of thing. I learned a long time ago that, no matter how much stuff you think you've brought, even if it looks like you went way overboard, once on the job there will be a good chance something you did not bring will bite you on your ass. Who needs to ditch off a job to run to the local supply stores- assuming they have what you need ? Years ago, some of us were moving some railroad passenger cars near Kingston, NY. We were working with a wildman of a rigger named Andy Burr. Burr was an oldtime rigger, and he had brought as gasoline driven hydraulic pumping unit and some big hydraulic rams to life the railroad cars off their trucks for a move on his 'housemover' type road dollies. We got the railroad cars up on 'cribbing' (timbers stacked log-cabin fashion) to support them, and had to turn each car 90 degrees to the rails and begin sliding them off and onto the road dollies. Burr went to the cab or his ancient Mack truck ( a beavertail with a winch) that he had left parked on site. Next thing I heard was 'RATS !!! F--N RATS !!!!' coming from the Andy Burr. I ran over to see what was up and Burr was cursing a blue streak (his usual manner, only a few times louder). Rats, quite literally, had gotten into the cab of his old Mack and had devoured a number of bars of Ivory soap he had kept there for this move. "Joe... shag your ass to the nearest store and bring back a s--tpot load of Ivory Soap" was what Burr hollered at me. I jumped in my pickup and made for the nearest hamlet where there was a small country store. I cleaned them out (sorry for the pun) of Ivory soap. I came back to find our crew plus Andy Burr all standing around burning daylight for want of that Ivory Soap. We soaped up the slide plates and moved the railroad car quickly enough, turned it 90 degrees and got it on Burr's dollies before darkness shut us down. Next day, Burr began the move of the railroad car up from Kingston to Phoenicia, NY. Burr did not bother with escort vehicles or permits. He was in a stake rack truck with his rigging and the hydraulic power unit, driving up Route 28 straddling the centerline. Behind him came a 10 wheel dump truck with a load of ballast stone (for the offloading pads to rig the railroad car back onto the tracks), dragging the railroad car on its dollies. Behind that trailed our guys in an assortment of pickup trucks loaded with tools, a couple of engine driven welders, cutting outfits and similar. The parade came to a halt when some yuppie in a fancy car refused to get onto the shoulder to let the load pass by. Burr solved it handily. He hopped out of his stake rack truck and went over to the car that would not pull aside. Burr hollered at the driver to get on the shoulder, and threatened to bust the guy's window, drag his skinny ass out and beat the living s--t out of him right then and there. We all had climbed out of our respective pickups and were, of course, hollering encouragement to Andy Burr. The guy in the car suddenly realized his life expectancy might be a matter of seconds if he did not get onto the shoulder. We made it up the road and rigged that railroad car off the dollies and onto its trucks with the rest of the Ivory Soap I'd bought at the start of the move.
In short, don't think you have brought all you need to a rigging or machinery moving job. Stuff that you did not think of may suddenly be needed, or stuff you actually saw in your shop or garage and figured you did not need will be the very thing you should have brought.
Andy Burr rigged and moved a lot of machinery and railroad equipment over the years. He was a real oldtime rigger. Somewhere along the line, he got the idea of "retiring" by opening a roadside zoo and having a narrow gauge German steam tank locomotive running on an oval of track at his place in Honesdale, PA. Burr accumulated a menagerie of animals, notably a number of black bears. Permits and other things needed to open the zoo never happened, and Burr was working to maintain proper habitats for his menagerie, as well as driving a variety of beater trucks to slaughterhouses to get food for his 'big cats' and his other animals. Burr used to call me at about 0430, and he always was shouting and we'd hear various animals and birds raising hell in the background. I always enjoyed working with Andy Burr, and he was one of the oldtime riggers for whom skid-steer loaders, all terrain forklifts and similar were neither known nor needed. It was ropefalls, chainfalls, a capstan type winch on his truck, and plenty of ingenuity and methods not unlike those used to build the Great Pyramids in the days of the Pharoahs. We never had an accident or had a load get away from us working with him, and we moved a number of railroad cars as well as a few heavy 'war production board' machine tools working with him. Take your time, think things through, and do not take shortcuts or chances. You will do fine.