The Great Bandsaw Adventure - Part Deux

[jteneyck]

When last I left you the BS was resting comfortably in my garage.  The next morning (yesterday) I made a girdle of plywood and 2 x 4's around it's spine.  I tried one more time to loosen the set screws on the motor pulley, with no more luck than the day before so I decided to proceed with it still installed.  I estimate the thing weighed nearly 500 lbs at this point.  



Then I pushed it against the garage landing in the center of the door opening.  Once there I screwed a cleat to the plywood, with the cleat resting on the landing. 



That cleat would serve two purposes, it would provide a pivot point when I pulled on the top of the saw and it would help keep the saw from tipping left or right.  If you look carefully you can see the winch cable attached to the lift eyebolt at the top of the machine.  That cable connected to a handwinch that installed inside my kitchen on a simple frame of 2x4's braced against a wall on one side and my kitchen cabinets on the other.  Another 2x4 to the ceiling keeps the contraption for lifting up as tension is applied.  You can sort of see it here:



and better here:



Well, it worked, and you can see in this photo how the cleat worked perfectly as a pivot point, and prevented the saw from trying to slide out as I tipped it. 



With that step accomplished we used the winch to pull the saw on its plywood back further into the kitchen.  When the cleat got to the threshold I unscrewed it and we pulled in the rest of the way.  Fortunately, even with the motor still attached the saw stayed in good balance.  The last little bit we had to push/pull by hand but it slid easily on the tile floor. 



At this point you can sort of see the challenge we had.  We needed to go to the right, down the cellar steps, but the wall on the left limits the access.  Part way along that wall is a pocket door to a half bath which provides relief if you can get the top of the machine that far.  I had made a mock up out of plywood to see if it would fit and it did if I picked up the base of the machine a few inches as I got it into the doorway.  That mockup was 24" wide at the base and 12" the rest of the way.  The column of the saw is about 9" wide, but with the plywood girdle it was 10-3/4".  Still, I was reasonably confident it would make the turn OK.  My backup plan was to stand the machine up and go through the door upright.  But I didn't want to do that because the top of the machine would have to go through the door first.  In other words, I have to tip it head first down the stairs, then winch it upwards and pull the base through.  It was doable, I just preferred not to do it that way if at all possible.  We almost ended up having to do it that way.

I installed 3, 2x6's down the cellar stairs.



They are screwed to 2x4 cleats below, and those cleats are screwed to the stringers.  That anchored everything in place so nothing could slip out as the BS slid over them.  I cut a small hole in the stairwell ceiling and hung a 2 ton chain fall from a chain wrapped around a 4 x 4 that spanned two ceiling joists in the attic.  The span is only 40 inches across the stairs so 2 joists is sufficient to hold well over 1000 lbs.  the photo above also shows a cable coming from a winch I installed at the bottom of the steps.  That winch was used to pull the saw into the stairwell as the hoist held the bottom end up.  In the last photo of the BS above you can see the yellow sling around the base of the saw and attached to the chain fall.  Here's another photo of that.



All went well until we tried to make that turn.  The plywood girdle jambed against the right side door molding of the basement door and the top of the BS hit the baseboard on the opposite wall.  I tried lifting the end of the saw as I had done to get the mock up to clear but then the top of the saw hit the wall opposite the stairs.  We went back and forth a couple of times w/o success. It finally became clear that we needed to remove the baseboard molding and cut the plywood girdle where it was jambing on the door molding.  The molding was easy to pop off.  Cutting the plywood while it was almost flat on the floor and jambed against the door molding proved more of a challenge.  But the HF multi-tool eventually chewed its way through it with me cutting from one side and Ken cutting most of it away from the other side.  A few hammer whacks at the end and we had cut out a semi-circle with about a 6" arc.

And that was it.  It pivoted right around the door frame then and the top of the machine went into the bathroom door opening.  If I had only cut the lower portion of the girdle the same width as the saw spine it would have gone around there with no trouble on the first shot.  I now know that this is absolutely the largest saw that can go down this stairway, at least lying down. 

So we pushed the saw through the opening, pulling it from below with the winch once or twice as needed, too, while lowering the chain fall until the saw tipped down the stairs.



I had guessed that the chain fall would not have enough capacity to lower the saw all the way to the bottom in one shot, and I was right.  So when we got near the limit of the chain fall I crawled past the saw and screwed two 2 x 4 cleats on top of the 2x6 runners. 



Well, that's my 10 photo limit, so I'm going to leaving you hanging here.  Watch for how this turns out, shortly. 

John

[Mr Eddie]

So I take it your wife has been out of town for a few days?