September, 2003.
Whoops! Here's where we start the tale, at a DoveBid auction
at a bankrupt manufacturing plant in Deerfield Beach, Florida.
Why is this exquisite 1000-pound machine laying helplessly on its back, bleeding oil onto the floor?
The riggers at the auction wanted $200 just to hoist this thing on my rented flatbed trailer.
Since that was a substantial fraction of what I had just paid for the item,
and having successfully moved much larger machines myself, I decided I could move this on my own.
Hah!
My first attempt was to disassemble the machine into pieces (table, knee, main column casting, base) that could be safely lifted with less effort and equipment. But after getting the table mostly off, it was clear that the complexity of the power feed and other components made diassembly a major task, further complicated by the lack of an owner's manual.
My second attempt was to jack it up with my Bridgeport-mover mattock onto wood blocks, high enough to slide a dolly underneath. Once outdoors, I could winch the dolly up ramps onto the trailer. What I failed to appreciate was how unbalanced and top-heavy this machine is. Due to the arrangement of the main column casting, the center of gravity sits hardly forward of the rear of the 20-inch base footprint. Jacking with a mattock involves a fair amount of tipping this way and that. After a few increments, it unexpectedly started to tip.