Took the first step towards building my shop

[Frank S]

Elvis has left the container.
In my 53 ft intermodal container I had 3 lathes, a Cincinnati horizontal Mill and an American Vertical mill. plus there is a lot of other stuff in there so the only part I could do any work out of was right at the entrance. I am thinking that soon I may need to have a couple of these lathes put in service or at the very least have them under power incase I may want to sell one of them.
The first step was how to get the LeBlond 26x40 lathe out without having to remove everything in front of it Now that I have the electrical panels in place the fork carriage on the backhoe is too wide to fit inside the container meaning the Cincinnati was going to be difficult to get out and return after the lathe was out.
I used a couple comealongs and lots of pry baring to turn it to an angle allowing just barely enough room to slip the 6000lb lathe past it, a long chain connected to the backhoe to pull it reduced the amount of jacking and baring for this task.









in its new home inside the Allied moving van/ machine shop van

[metric_taper]

in its new home inside the Allied moving van/ machine shop van

I have a very cheap China copy of your lathe. Same size and weight. Replacing the original 12" 3 and 4 jaw chucks with Bison, and Pratt Burnerd brands made all the difference. D1-8 spindle taper. My user name came from this lathe, as the manual say's the internal bore is MT#6, which is absolutely wrong. It took some figuring but it's a 90mm metric taper, which I still need to fix the #4MT adapter slug as it was machined wrong from the factory. The minor diameter is .004inch smaller then it should be, so it rocks in the taper. Feels like it's home, but it's not. These metric tapers are some sort of DIN standard. More irritating, you can't get the specs without buying them, like everything DIN.
I have a #2 Rockford horizontal Miller. 1930s era originally overhead line drive, but it came with a Lima conversion (bolt on kit with Ford model A transmission, and 3 phase motor). Sadly, it never gets used with the Wells-Index vertical right next to it. That and the #9 Brown and Sharp spindle taper has limited tooling. I would get rid of it, but it is stuck as the first machine in a long 8x30 foot machine shop location. And I can't move it past the other machines like you've done. For the age of the machine, it has power feed in all three axis.

[Toolmaker51]

That's exactly what I'd have done.
If I had a backhoe, 100' of chain, an observer, plus a few other necessities....Still trying to graduate beyond Egyptian rollers and pinch bars.

[Frank S]

That's exactly what I'd have done.
If I had a backhoe, 100' of chain, an observer, plus a few other necessities....Still trying to graduate beyond Egyptian rollers and pinch bars.

I had to do my own observing pull a few feet or a few inches as sometimes the case happened to be didn't want Jane inside the container trying to give me hand signals which I probably wouldn't have been able to see anyway, while trying to move a 3 ton obtrusively shaped object past an equally obtrusive unveiling object of the same weight, with less than a couple inches of clearance for one to pass the other. The possibility of rendering bodily harm would have been astronomical.

[Frank S]

Found the perfect place to park my little 12x36 Sheldon lathe. the gray cabinet at the opposite end will eventually be relocated to another location out of the van

[Crusty]

Ditto what TM said. I end up doing things like Fred and Barney* did them too, except that I have a chainfall hoist and a High Lift jack which often come into play.

Horror Freight has about the cheapest transport grade chains that I've found and every time I get a little extra money I order another 20'er.


*Fred Flintstone, Barney Rubble

[Toolmaker51]

Lol. I'm a Fred.
Who's Barney? That numbnutts forever absent with work to do.
One thing about jacks and rollers, aside from minding fingers it's very safe.
Going to be a lot soon, shipping some 'arn home accumulated during this CA stay.

[Frank S]

LOL, all of the Barneys I even met turned out to be carbon copies of Barney Fife.
Since I am wanting to start on the East wall as soon as possible. I decided while I was moving furniture around inside the shop that I might as well get something moved that has been in the shop since before it was even a tent. Besides hopefully I will get to sand blast and paint it soon then I can put it back together.
I have a pair of trailer tandems under both ends so I could move it sideways off of the tri axle assembly group and have moved it from 1 side of the shop to the other to get it out of my way So in order to move it out of the shop the dolly's had to be rotated 90° No way to lift it with my backhoe and I didn't want to try and drag the A frame over it so that only leaves cribbing and jacks





It is amasing how much stuff will accumulate around or under something in a few months

[Toolmaker51]

That's exactly what I'd have done.
If I had a backhoe, 100' of chain, an observer, plus a few other necessities....Still trying to graduate beyond Egyptian rollers and pinch bars.

Amended. Because mere rollers and pinch bars, in reality are less then bare minimal; 1/2 ton A-frame gantry & hoist, smaller lever and chain hoists, jacks, 7' Johnson lever dolly, 20, 16 and 10 gauge shims, metal and wood cribbing, pallet jacks, flat carts, bottle jacks...
and no Barney, whether fife, piccolo, trombone or alto sax.

[Frank S]

Ever since I started the shop project I have had a thought of how to incorporate the tent door into the structure. the tent door some may remember was an 8 1/2 ft high 20 some odd feet long gate like wall I constructed to close off a side between my 2 shop trailers and serve as a door when needed to access the tent from the front side.
So today after digging a hole in the ground then used my plate packer to embed another truck rim to serve as an anchor for a post I wanted to put in the East end of the shop so I could start building a wall there.
I started thinking about the tent door once again. being 8 1/2 feet high it would have meant I could have the wall half way to the top plate almost instantly all I would then have to do would be to insulate it and sheet the inside to protect the insulation after taking a look at it I decided since the sheet metal had been run lengthwise making it horizontal and I want the sheet metal running up and down I decided to stand it on end and trim it to fit the slant of the roof I would still cover nearly half of the proposed wall area just all the way up in one section. plus it was the exact correct width to cover the entire end of the container and the elevated work space above.
never waste time with a grinder or a saw when you have a torch available

I have it clamped in place will have to dig some dirt out of the way before I can plumb it to vertical then weld it in place