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Unloading a larege lathe

A friend just had his new to him lathe delivered and he leveled and took any twist out.
Our New Lathe Arrived This Morning.

Thanks, Butch, for that bright light into a darkening corner.

Hope "taking the twist out" didn't cause flooding of local roads by affecting too much of the County's soils geology.

:)

As a one-time sweat-slave to Niles Tool Works and Niles-Bement-Pond's notorious brute-force and fossilized heavy-clumsiness-works, I get so damn WEARY of hearing a 13" South Bent or "only a G-damned Regal" called "large" by some poor soul upgrading from an @las 6" x 18" or a Horror-Fright LSO.

Made the day!

:)
 
Iz that a Sherline?

Ennybuddie nose all lathey-things inspire the cashew-all nut visitor from down the street's "knowledgeable" comment:

"Oh, I see you have a SOUTH BEND!"

You can't talk to those folks... Do get a kick out of wandering past the drillpress on the way to the shop door.

Just short of palpable FEAR.. "What the f**k is THAT?"

"Alzmetall AB5/S. Rectangular table. 'bout 1951 or '52".

"Germans were literally into HOLES in a Very Big Way.... after having the crap bombed out of 'em for four straight years.... hadda make a living SOMEHOW!"

Heavy hams Hans weighs a bit over a full half-ton more than the HBX-360-BC or either 10EE.

Sumtimes I think the only REAL reason I harbour that Godzilla's pup is for peace and quiet off the back of the "shock and awe" effect shutting up driveling civilians.

Never another single WORD about their Horror-Fright toys.

That's "value add" or "ROI" enuf..

:D
 
have to say that I bet seeing that lathe being moved around up in the air was like poetry in motion.
Bill D

That would be the long-gone riggers I used for diamond safes '74-'84. Not all they did.

Their pride and joy - filmed IIRC - was lifting the visible top of a gun-turret out of an armoured warship being broken up for scrap, Port of Baltimore.

Thinly armoured Cruiser, IIRC. "BB's" were are a whole 'nuther animal as to armoured main-battery turrets.

"One for the books", given that CH-47 Chinooks routinely passed by with damaged UH1-Hueys on a fishin' line was a tad less common.

Big ass bird-of-prey lookin' CH-54 "Skycrane" helicopter with a CH-47 on the wire, and a UH1-B on the fishin' line UNDER the Chinook!

Jest wop-wop-woping across the sky as if trolling for Bass and Catfish, same go!

Or maybe just Sikorsky's revenge on Boeing and Bell, mindin' 'em who Grand-Dad was?

:)
 
Powered scraper, when need be.

Texas has a reasonable ration of flat land. Or nearly so..

When in WEST By God, Virginia, OTOH?

Flat land for a shop and slab under a lathe that size ain't standard issue.

Yah have to make yer own.

YouTube

:D

When my Grandson played football for WVU, when we walked around
stadium, The sidewalk was 3" different in height side to side. The only place in the World that you were always walking uphill.
 
Personally that lathe is the longest I have ever seen. I am 75 now and I remember my father telling me these long horizontal lathes have been pretty much replaced by vertical lathes several stories tall for long shafting for the simple reason of gravity. So I'm surprised machines like this are still in use. Was my father wrong?
 
Personally that lathe is the longest I have ever seen. I am 75 now and I remember my father telling me these long horizontal lathes have been pretty much replaced by vertical lathes several stories tall for long shafting for the simple reason of gravity. So I'm surprised machines like this are still in use. Was my father wrong?

Steady rests exist. Some jobs used a lot more than just the one. Whatever is being made will be supported in its "Day Job", too. So not wrong. Just more than one workable answer.

Vintage of 1945 meself. We had a tour of a facility on "Neville island", "Dravo Corporation" works, IIRC, Pittsburgh, end of the 1950's or dawn of the 1960's as HS kids. Somebody's Dad was an executive there. Same with Mesta works, Jim Mesta a classmate, his Dad & Uncle still runnin' the firm as CFO and CEO.

Looooooong lathe? Claimed to be one of the longest in the world. Custom built. Over a hundred-foot bed, over a hundred inch swing. Mind UK's Craven Brothers did far larger swing as a matter of routine. Bed was in sections, of course. Lots of them. Probably had to be aligned for each job and DURING the job.

Group of schoolkids got rather brief tours, so the numbers may be off!

Dravo had made propeller shafts for Iowa class battleships, among other goods.

Double-header river barges took them down the river, then ocean-going transit from N'Orleans to the shipyards.

Not so sure about the bed length of Cravens, but the Royal Navy, and shipbuilding in general had similar shafting needs, if no one else did, so.

Guess they were too long for rail, and rail wasn't meant to be interrupted for special-handling during the war. Nor did we yet have Interstate highways to mess-up with "Oversize Load" rigs, where traffic can flow AROUND them easier than on rail.

Most main rail routes are "dual main line" but close enough together anything wide or long enough to need special handling on curves may want BOTH directions shut-down, whole sections or divisions at a go, AND a constant stream of near-trackside poles and such relocated, then put-back.

Highways were more flexible. Navigable rivers and locks as well. Part of that "clearance" was intentional, same as the Paname Canal was sized, then ships sized to the canal, later, see "PANAMAX", for example.
 
Why not? Cash hand scraped in a Madison grinder nearly as big a couple of years ago.

Tom

Not only "why not"? "What ELSE?"

Bigger the machine tool, the fewer the alternatives to scraping.

How many planers or bedway grinders still "out there" as could manage a BIG lathe's bed? And how were THEY made straight and true?

Especially the first ones ever built?

One of the several reasons the really big boys are done with sectional beds.
 
They seriously picked up that lathe in one spot with one truck?
Just trying to break it in half?
Or was it going to scrap anyway?


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Think Snow Eh!
Ox
 
They seriously picked up that lathe in one spot with one truck?
Just trying to break it in half?
Or was it going to scrap anyway?

Don't think so. He said "100,000 lbs" rated FL. And that they knew their s**t.

My expectation is speader bar and balanced chain/cable attach, overhead lifted, not "forked".. or they did NOT "know their s**t".

Which is unlikely.

Whom else do we know is commercially successful enough for LONG enough to even be able to find or own a FL that stout?

Not counting HKG's ports, I know of ONE even close to that class. Up in Ohio. "Inherited" when "ERC" bought an entire plant to piece-part scrap it out, turned it into a warehouse while that was in-process.

ISTR I left there with FIVE Reliance RPM III, scarce 180 VDC wound Dinosaur Current motors either new or rebuilds as had sat as spares, leads not yet connected.

Well worth a roughly 1,000 mile r/t go-fetch off Sterling/Dulles, VA. Two, actually. But I hit McKean for this-or-that, same go, so that works well. John & Dee just traffic in nicer goods than HGR!

:)
 
Well it was the new one even - not the old one.



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Think Snow Eh!
Ox
 
Fairly late ATW - late fifties or so. They got hard ways in '47. Good luck to the scraper hand:D

As to the picking up, I see TWO fork lifts - maybe the far one is doing its share
 








 
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