"picking up the shaper"
The things we do to feed our tool addiction
Well it's home
The shaper was advertised as pick up only, (will need crane truck), I had no idea of the weight of the shaper. After talking to him, he said he would use his tractor (backhoe) to load it into a trailer, that was if it would lift it. It was starting to sound really heavy. He said had bought the shaper from were he used to work (a tile manufacturer) when they closed down, and delivered it to his house with the company's large truck crane.
After trying to borrow a trailer from Wednesday onwards to move the shaper and the mill on Saturday, I finally found a reasonably priced 9 x 5 one to rent on Friday afternoon for $60 with $200 deposit. I could not believe a dual axle trailer was so hard to come by, as I usually hire a tray top truck. Most every hire company had a booking for the weekend, the few that did have one wanted anywhere from $110 to $210 a day, I could rent a truck for $89, but all that was available was an enclosed one for furniture etc. So it wouldn't be impossible to load and unload the machines.
I have a good 7 x 4 single axle trailer, but I was worried about the weight of the shaper and for a few years I have had a 10 x 6 dual axle trailer in the paddock that a mate gave me, it needs work to say the least, so I can see it needs to come up to the top of the projects list soon and give it some
We arrived at the blokes farm (Tom) about 11:30am on Saturday to pick it up, he walked over said Hi, then held out a $50 note. He then went on to say when we paid the other day, two $50 notes must have been stuck together because we he had counted it latter we had over paid him $50, now thats country honesty for you.
My 17 year old son and I got into dismantling the shaper with an engine crane. I took it up so I didn't have to call on him every time we needed a lift with the smaller things like the ram, table, knee and the solid rear cast motor extension off, as he didn't think his old Ford backhoe would lift the hole thing, so we had to make it lighter, thats a ford for you.
After dismantling it in 38degC heat, which took about hour and a half he came over with the backhoe and started lifting it to load it into the trailer. the backhoe struggled to lift the main casting and had me worried about weather the hire trailer would take it, and the road back up there had lots of pot holes and was really rough. He gave up on the front bucket and switched to the rear bucket which also struggled to lift it, but with the son reversing the trailer under it and me directing the shaper we got it in sitting on six 4 x 2 RHS across the trailer that I brought with me to spread the load, so we didn't bend the trailer.
The mill was next. and again even with taking the 3 phase motor off, his backhoe struggled to lift it into my sons Ute and we used the same technique to load it. The rest of the parts went in with no trouble, we put them onto timber blocks that we also brought with us. After strapping it down we were ready to go, it was 3:15pm. The hour and a half trip home went fine. I could feel the pull on our V6 commodore wagon but it wasn't too bad. My son followed behind in his Ute with the mill and a few of the shaper parts.
When we got home, I reversed the trailer into the shed, and we used the 2 ton chain block to lift it off. After taking the weight and getting it up off the trailer it didn't feel that heavy on the chain block. We estimate the main casting to be around 800kg, thats going off what my new 1 ton mill felt like on the same chain block when it was delivered. So all up we think it would weigh around 1300-1500 kg's. Maybe a bit more but no were near what we thought it was going to weigh. We were thinking it was going to be more like 2 to 2.5 ton, so this must be one of the lighter classes of 24 inch shapers. I am not sure what the capacity of a tractor is but this one didn't seem to be very strong. He said he had replaced the hydraulic pump with a new one. The hydraulics were working hard because it nearly stalled the motor a few times when he was lifting the machines.
I have only given it a quick look over while dismantling and unloading it, but I have only found a few light scratches on the ram ways, probably because they have had way wipers on there, and a few heavier ones on the knee ways. No teeth missing anywhere and nothing rusted up.
I don't have any pictures of loading it because we forgot to take the camera up their, but here are a few while unloading it.
I will update this tread as I progress with the shaper, and will do a separate thread on the mill in a few days.
Davo
