I’m going to be moving my instrument shop from the Old Peters Cartridge Factory back to my garage. Going be a little cramped but it’s doable once things are organized
When I started making whistles in 1998, I did it in my back room of the house and then into the garage. In 2000, I moved it 1/4 mile down the road to the Peter Cartridge Factory. Funny thing is that they used to make little brass tubes into ammunition shells. Making whistles there was sort-of like the phrase “Pounding swords into plowshares”.
The county political folk seem to want all kinds of additional demands in the building which would cost more than the rent for the place and I need to save the rent money anyway to afford gasoline this summer so the whistle shop is returning to the garage.
First, I had to clean out the garage. Amazing thing, I never realized how many people read craigs list. I put the items that I want to get rid of on the “free” section and they went very quickly.
Moving the 1920’s era 1000 to 2000 pound lathe is going to be the interesting challenge.
Good luck on the move Dan’l. I remember how much of a pain in the tuchas it was last time I moved my shop, and that was only from upstairs to downstairs…
cutting down on all that overhead will feel good. I moved a heavy lathe like you are talking about. I took it apart and put the still way too heavy pieces on rollers and moved them egyptian stiyle.
Good luck and watch your fingers and toes
The problem is that the legs are cast to the body of the lathe. The motor mount, carriage, head and tailstock can remove but that’s pain to put back together. I’ll probably take the motor off but that’s all.
Egyptian style does quite work when the destination is a 1/4 mile away and there are too many cars on the street. Even crossing our street is like a human version of the Frogger game.
I did manage to put steel wheels on it, that helps a lot.
My shop is on the first floor: used to be on an upstairs landing when we first moved in and still had the kids living with us. When they moved out, the spare bedroom that had been their study became my tiny shop. Unfortunately, our basement is very damp and no place to store fine wood and tools.
How about something like platform lift truck, or a rolling shop crane which would let you put it in the bed of a pick-up truck for transport. I’ve used both(rentals) for moving engine blocks and cast iron bathtubs.
Not true, the little thingy goes up and down with a crank. That makes up for the non-telescoping. But it’s heck to get up and down the stairs with a load
That manual thingy wouldn’t have worked on my lathe, it’s too heavy.
Things didn’t go so well today, a towing company came to move the lathe on a flat bed truck. When they connected the legs to the J-hooks and pull them tight, the right leg cracked and broke a bolt.
So now, it’s laying on the floor in my garage with the leg missing and broken off bolt still lodge in the casting.
My Brass and Aluminum low whistles, Chromatic whistles - anything large is temporarily unavailble on my site until I get the lathe repaired.
The high whistles are still available and I have arrangements with someone who has a CNC lathe with bar feeder to make plastic blocks for the PVC Low-D’s - which are my bread and butter whistles.
