So a Reccy mission was called for. Just doable in a day. Leave mine at 4am , arrive when the museum opens at 9. Couple of hours at the museum, leave around lunchtime and home for dinner. Round trip of just over 500miles. There was a lot of stuff there,but the main item of interest to me was this
A Colchester Mastiff 1400 lathe. Bought new and seen extremely little use. Very well specced with most the options, faceplate,4 jaw Chuck, steady and a taper turning attachment. It’s big...Just under 5m overall length. It wouldn’t be easy to get out the building
This milling machine was also very there....a big lump well settled into the floor of the old mill that the museum is housed in. Somebody had previously tried to move it ,and had failed. That sounds like a challenge to me 🤣🤣 It was of no interest to me initially, but that’s not to say I wouldn’t be having it .It was a pre World War Two Browne and Sharpe no3 universal mill. Horizontal and vertical milling. Big Iso50 taper tooling. Weighs about 3 tons...
The main challenge to this whole lot was how to get them out? When they went in, certain walls and doors hadn’t been there. Also bear in mind this is a government institution,and any work there has to be preceded by a risk and method statement. One route out of the building they initially really pushed for was to knock the wall down behind the lathe. Then move it into the corridor behind there, scoot it down to the end to a loading door. The loading door opens into a below ground level pit that is neither wide enough nor long enough to get the lathe out. The doorway isn’t exactly tall either. It would involve a very awkward lift to get the lathe out,basically lifting it out on its end. You would need to lift it a good 15m in the air to get it out. Nobody in their right mind would write a risk and method statement for that, let alone try it. I don’t think they were overly happy when I told them I wouldn’t be returning if they pursued that route as the one I needed to follow.......😏
There were two other options that could be feasible. One was up the ramp,through numerous corridors/ tunnels and a very long haul of about 60 m up into the top section of the museum. Then a 90 degree turn. Huge folding doors that haven’t been opened since the 1980,s. A trolley bus and double decker bus would also need to be dragged out the way. Second option was up the ramp and a 90 degree turn. Initially not that keen on the latter as there was a row of electrical boxes right on the corner.
Drove home from the first reccy mission confident I could get it out,just a question of how. The five hour drive home also gave me time to realise the museums punting of using the pit was probably down to well meant ignorance. The person involved was no engineer,and had only ever seen something going out the museum through the pit,therefore it must be the best option.
Back home I fired an email back to the chap I had been corresponding with all along. I outlined the options. Whilst he wasn’t overly enamoured with the idea of having to move the trolley bus and open the doors, he did at least fully understand my refusal to use the pit. He said he would look into it.Given the museum is pretty much run by volunteers,and is totally underfunded,the next bit took ages. Correspondence came and went but nothing definite was forth coming....Well, not in the time frame I had hoped for.
In the meantime I had collected the big five axis cnc lathe and realised just how carp the machine moving skates are that you can hire. Having dropped the 7 ton lathe on a perfectly flat floor,it was evident that for the task at hand,better skates would be needed to navigate the highly rutted and uneven floor the museum rests on. So, back to the drawing board and I designed and manufactured some skates. They would hopefully be high enough to stop the lathe bottoming out in the middle when entering and exiting the slope.
I would also need some sort of motive power to get the lathe up the slope. Given the tunnel like nature of the corridor with such low ceiling height,even a container spec forklift would be too big to fit in the hole. So, I found this hydraulic winch on Face ache market place
True to my ethos of only buying cheap tools,it was a spares and repairs listing. The general condition of it was good,so my thinking was it would be something stupid. Given what I paid for it, I could afford to replace the pump or the motor if needs be,and still be quids in,as they seem to go for about £2k , and I had forked out considerably less for it. As it turned out ,it was a simple repair. The spider coupling between the pump and the motor had disintegrated . £25 for a new one and two new hydraulic pipes and a new gauge saw it back to good working condition.
Rover 75 Connie SE (stored) MG ZTT 160 (for sale) Rover 75 Connie Tourer (dog hauler and general shifter) Toyota Starlet Sportif Auto (town car) Maestro 700 van (under build)
In the meantime, the skates got tried out a couple of times.
They were used successfully to move the big cnc lathe from one side of the workshop to the other They roll really easy.think the house elf was most impressed that I pushed the 7 ton monster away from the wall just using my legs🤣🤣
Then in January, out of the blue, correspondence with the Museum resumed. Was I still interested? Hell yeah...😊 So another Reccy mission was arranged to finalise the details. Seeing the loss of their storage facility was now looming very large, they were very eager to get the toolroom cleared. Things that may have been an issue before, suddenly weren’t.
A road trip up there ensued. v8ian was suckered in for the day trip. Very useful, competent engineer to have about. We looked into the logistics of how to move the machines. We both agreed what needed to be done before the move. We also both thought it would be a two to three day operation. Bearing in mind it was still winter,( we arrived in the snow), and that the hospitality sector was shut down due to some bug or other, things would have to wait until spring.
We headed for home with a plan formulating with every mile travelled. Some of the loose bits of the lathe came back as well, like the faceplate.
Mug gives a good indication as to how big the lathe is,if that is the faceplate it will swing 😊
Certainly some nice equipment and accessories, lets hope when you wake them from their slumber they perform! at least they wont be full of expensive electronikery components!
Certainly some nice equipment and accessories, lets hope when you wake them from their slumber they perform! at least they wont be full of expensive electronikery components!
Pretty sure when that lathe was made electronikery hadn't even been invented.
(Quick story. many years ago we lived in an area with a significant Amish population. Gideon Stutzman was a carpenter who also did outside work so we had him make a table for us. We were chatting one day and he was describing doing an 'outside' job and having access to electric hand tools. I fully expected him to tell me how wonderful they were but instead he proceeded to explain that they would bind every time you leaned into them - he had no use for them at all. I then remembered that all the tools in his shop were diesel powered belt driven. Yeah he had a whole lot more torque than 'lectrickery. Oh and then at least he still had all his fingers - odd for guys using unguarded belt drives. )
With the Reccy mission over,it was time to get things going. We had found out where there was a live 3 phase connection we could use for the winch. v8ian had come up with using a girder clamp to anchor the winch with. This had been something I had been pondering,where or what to attach the winch too. I wasn’t overly keen on using ground anchors,so this was a good alternative. The original idea was to fit the girder clamp to an overhead steel,and winch off of that. So...I need a girder clamp
Good karma or what? The very next day this clamp turned up in the skip with a damaged thread. New thread made from some high tensile steel and we are good to go.
April 29th Hotels where allowed to take work related bookings again, so booked us in for a couple of nights. Whole process made a lot easier with the right paper work- basically letters for each of us from the Government stating this was essential work and travel that needed to be done whilst the museum was closed to the public. The other lot of paperwork was very kindly sorted by grumpynorthener - risk and method statements. Expertly written that we could deviate from the method pretty far and still have our ar$es covered 😊
So it was pick the van up Saturday afternoon. Collect House elf from the train station Sunday morning. Go pack the van at work. Park it inside. Then get the missus to collect us. 4am meet-up at the house with V8Ian ,off to work. Swop vans over and off we go....Yeah right, and Pigs can fly........🙁
I do miss a good skip dive, I never bothered to collect/save any sort of material as I could always find it when I needed it in one of the many skips on our old industrial estate!
Originally it looked like it would be just Ian and I going up. Eleventh Hour the House Elf realises ,A its half term at Uni. B, there’s more month than money ,and C, if he volunteered,he would be fed for a couple of days and get a free, all expenses paid working holiday to the grand metropolis of Bradford. Who could refuse such a lifetime opportunity? 🙄. ( Basically the first thing we saw in Bradford had a Mullet. And yes it was a thing as we couldn’t ascertain if it was Male, Female or Popup toaster...😳🤣🤣.) So, plans changed on the Friday afternoon, hire van swapped out for a bigger one....And herein lies the problem. We landed up with more van than rollershutterdoor. So much for the best laid plans and all that, so House Elf collected, equipment put in boxes in the workshop ready for a early Monday morning packing session as I didn’t want to leave a van load of tools outside overnight. Early Monday morning start and we were on our way.
Most visitors at the museum see this
We got to see this
Much more interesting having free reign in the storage section, loads of interesting stuff squirrelled away 😊