Thread: The straw that breaks the camel's back

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to lash out and replace the introductory level lathe (GMC) with a nice old Coronet (I think it was made in the early 1970s). The Coronet is a substantial beast in itself, but breaks down into manageable bits and, with the assistance of the former owner, I was able to disassemble it at his place relatively easily. FO had made a substantial cabinet for the Coronet which includes 100 kg of concrete in the base. Moving that behemoth is another story (from which my aged corpus is still recovering).It is, however, mounted on fairly good casters.


This entry, however, is not to talk about the new lathe, other than as the cause of a lot of work on my part. To fit the lathe in a place that would enable it to be used conveniently, without rendering the rest of the workshop unusable has involved/will involve the following steps (only steps 1 to 4 have occurred to date):

1. move number two workbench 600 mm to the right to free up space to its left as a new home for drill press;
2. move number one workbench, which sits in the middle of the shop, 1 m to its right so drill press can be moved into new home;
3. move drill press;
4. move number one workbench and again - this time 1.5 m to the left and diagonally in front of drill press, to enable lathe cabinet to be brought in (see also next two steps);
5. move scrap timber bin entirely (not sure where it's going to go);
6. move Triton workcentre into space occupied by scrap bin (hopefully leaving enough space to move it away from the wall when I want to use it);
7. wheel in lathe cabinet to its new position;
8. move number one workbench back into position in the middle of the shop, perhaps slightly to the left of original location.

The old GMC had been just sitting on the Workcentre - which was not a satisfactory arrangement. To make the Coronet welcome, I had to make proper space for it.

Yesterday, I took a day's leave, mainly to ferry my daughter to and from an examination, so in between those trips, I started with the moves. I only got four of them done because every time I moved a piece I discovered how much crap had accumulated under and around each of them.

After each move I had to collect items that had fallen and never been recovered, find a place for them to live in the meantime and then sweep and vacuum. I thought my shop was relatively clean (messy, but clean), but I filled my 75 L shop bin four times!


Perhaps I shouldn't leave the shop in the same configuration so long next time!


For those who are asking themselves this question, I did not unpack any of the storage (including under the number one workbench), I just hoisted the two benches onto dollies using a hydraulic carjack and pushed them around. That probably made the need for cleaning more acute since the weight on the dollies was substantial, but moving the drill press would have required the same clean up as it is on casters which would not have travelled smoothly over the terrain.


I will post photos of the final installation when it is achieved. My plan is for that to occur this weekend, but I am sure that others have plans I have not been told about yet which will prevent that.