The part I'm having a hard time with isn't getting the Large Very Heavy
Thing (about 1500 lbs) up on rollers. That's easy with a 10' steel pry bar
and a brick as a fulcrum. The hard part is how to get it up the ramp and
into the truck without an anchor point in the truck ( a winch or come along
would be easy if there was an anchor)...

The current concept is to walk it up the ramp using the 10' pry bar
(actually a digger bar, if you know what that is) about 6-12", wedge, reset
lever, and repeat.

On a side note - the rollers I use are about 2-3" Can't recall exactly)
dowels - probably oak - that I turned about 10 years ago. At that point, my
daughter was 5, and she was thrilled that she could push the Large Very
Heavy Thing across the shop by herself.....

-James

-----Original Message-----
From: OldTools [mailto:oldtools-
bounces@s...] On Behalf Of Ed
Minch
Sent: Wednesday, January 28, 2015 8:22 AM
To: Christopher Swingley
Cc: OldTools List
Subject: Re: [OldTools] Lifting heavy things

7, 2015, at 10:47 PM, Christopher Swingley  wrote:

> 
> Scott's mention of jacks and cranes and blocking earlier today 
> reminded me of one of last summer's projects.  It involves old tools 
> and wood, but not of a sort we traditionally discuss in this forum.


Chris

Well done - and how common is a 50 foot straight log in your area?  They are
pieces of wood that not only will warm you twice, but now have the potential
to warm you a few more ties before it is all over.

I showed this set of pictures about 2 years ago, but here it is again:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/ruby1638/14097256262/in/set-7215764408779
4668/">https://www.flickr.com/photos/ruby1638/14097256262/in/set-721576440877946
68/

My brother lives on the Esopus Creek about 200 yards from the Hudson River
below Albany.  The house is about as close to the creek as Chris' is, and
was built in the 30's.  In 1955 there was an epic flood where the house had
a couple of inches of water in it, so it was raised 2 cinder blocks higher,
16".

In 2011 there was a lot - a lot - of rain in the area.  In fact if you watch
some of CHris' videos, at the end some videos of that flood come up - Irene
by name.  The creek came up and put 2" of water in the house, so he and his
wife had to move out and fix things up.  He devised a method where he cut
the interior drywall at about 30" off the floor, cut out the wall
insulation, and installed a chair rail and a baseboards with grooves at the
back and a removable piece as a wainscotting.  He changed some wiring to be
flood proof, re-insulated, and finished things off and moved back in.  Since
Irene was the 100 year flood he figured he was OK for a while.

Sandy hit the area a year later.  The water rose 13 feet in New York City
and actually filled a couple of tunnels under the East River - yow.  His
house is 80 miles up the river and they got 7 feet of that 13.  The water
was 22" up the walls of his freshly re-freshed house.  During Irene, the
water came from upstream, but in Sandy it came from downstream.  Sandy was
something like 34" higher than the epic 1955 flood!!

Again he moved out and in the spring raised the house.  He has a good friend
who is in the Timber Framer's Guild and he works mostly on mill restoration,
but I also watched him replace one rotted member of a truss in a big old
stone barn without taking the truss apart.  I also had a fun day numbering
and disassembling a 1740 Dutch barn with him and his crew.

He came with his 15 screw jacks and a truck load of timbers, and 4 of us
spent the day lifting the house 28".  It was - lift and inch on this row of
5, lift an inch on that row of 5 and back and forth under the house all day.
All the time wrestling big timbers to set the house on.  Pretty interesting
day.

Our sailboat was a few miles away out of the water for the season on the
Roundout Creek in Kingston and the water came up high enough that smaller
boats were floating out into the road, but we need 6 feet of water to float
so we were OK.  I included some pictures showing how easy it is to handle 12
tons with the right equipment.  They have these machines that can handle a
couple of hundred tons.

OT content - check those screw jacks.

Ed Minch