Yes, that will work.
Cutting is not really the issue.
Installing the 2 heavy lead weights, swaging the cable fittings and getting the thing standing up will be the issue.
The seller is going to help, but I think he only took them apart and usually reassembly can be more difficult than disassembly...
Originally Posted by jb7
Tin Can
No worries, it will be cut.
Installing weights safely is the issue.
Tin Can
Randy,
Having recently taken delivery of a bipost stand refurbished by the Barry and Monica Cochran in Tennessee, I can offer a few bits of insight:
1) I don't know the manufacture date of my stand, and the details may have varied over the years, but my columns are tubing with about a quarter-inch wall. The thing is a [I]beast[I]. If you have the time, my advice would be to use a sheet of paper to scribe a squared line around the pipe, and then make successive short cuts with a Porta-Band until you can connect the cuts and drop the cutoff. Clean up the ends with and angle grinder, and you will be good to go. The caps which carry the cable pulleys do not rotate on the columns, so the end cuts don't have to be all that precise. I wouldn't recommend taking the columns off of the base unless someone has already done it, because:
2) There is a bit of artistry involved in removing and replacing the columns; they have to be exactly parallel if the carriage is going to travel smoothly, and this is accomplished by the use of four flange bolts and four jack screws for each column. The lateral spacing is not quite so critical, but because the flanges are only about 6" in diameter, the "leverage" seen at the top is pretty large.
3) If the stand is partially assembled, be very careful with the it until laying it down and sliding out the weights for inspection. Mine were attached using 1/4"lag-screw hooks in holes drilled into the lead, and about four minutes after standing the whole thing up in the bed of the truck (a three-person job, by the way) there was a resounding crash as one of the weights parted company with its cable. It put a two-inch deep dent in the truck bed. It seems that the screws had stripped out before, and someone tried to pot them in with some kind of adhesive, (According to the Cochrans, every stand they had ever seen was assembled with lag hooks.) We drilled out the holes, put in brass threaded inserts, and replaced the lag hooks with 3/8-16 eye bolts..
The safest way that we could come up with to remove and replace the weights involved a ten-foot length of PVC pipe; with the stand lying down, push the weight up to the top and unhook it, then use the pipe to gently slide it down to the bottom. Each weight is about seventy pounds, and you don't want to let it build up any momentum on the way down. I wouldn't even think about trying to lift it in or out using the cable; one slip and you would probably amputate a digit or two. For replacement, the same procedure it used, but have someone at the top end feed in the cable, keeping enough tension to prevent it from looping and getting kinked when it is pulled tight.
4) The stand, assembled, is slightly more than 36" wide at the base, so you may have to remove the longitudinal base members to get it through a typical doorway. A lot of blocking and a floor jack will make this fairly simple, but be sure to securely restrain the column assembly if you turn it so that the two columns are in the vertical plane. We used big C-clamps, two-by-fours and some 3/8" lag bolts for this. (I did mention that this thing is a beast, right?)
Unless you have a wide, twelve-foot-tall door, you will probably have to stand the thing up by tilting it; if so, remember that the base is three feet wide and if you make the stand 11'6" tall you will have only fraction of an inch clearance under a 12' ceiling on the way up.
Finally: Monica Cochran took quite a few pictures while we were unloading and assembling the stand, and if you ask politely she might share them wth you. Barry and Monica are good folks and possess a wealth of information about the Deardorff equipment. They stay pretty busy, but it wouldn't hurt to ask
Good luck, be very careful, if let us all know how it goes.
Harol
Harold,
Thank you!
This is all great info, lag bolts into lead! I can do better, I hope.
The pipes are already removed. The local seller has agreed to assist. He has 2 stands and some experience.
As a diesel engine mechanic, I have experience installing big heavy things, but I don't have a chain fall in my studio. The seller and I already discussed that. I do have massive wood beams 2 feet above my double drywall ceiling. I hope to avoid installing a skyhook...
This may take us some time to do it right and safely the first time.
One end of my studio has pallet racks and I have been considering adding a pickup truck bed hoist to the top of it to load motorcycles onto the top of the rack. Perhaps I need to do that asap as that would give me a big help right there.
I would assemble it outside with a hoist, but my 2 doors are 36" and placed at 90 degrees, just getting my broken fridge out was barely possible.
I will contact Monica Cochran for images, I bought a nice Linhof and numerous Deardorff parts from them in the last couple years.
Thanks for the great advice!
Randy
Randy,
Having recently taken delivery of a bipost stand refurbished by the Barry and Monica Cochran in Tennessee, I can offer a few bits of insight:
1) I don't know the manufacture date of my stand, and the details may have varied over the years, but my columns are tubing with about a quarter-inch wall. The thing is a [I]beast[I]. If you have the time, my advice would be to use a sheet of paper to scribe a squared line around the pipe, and then make successive short cuts with a Porta-Band until you can connect the cuts and drop the cutoff. Clean up the ends with and angle grinder, and you will be good to go. The caps which carry the cable pulleys do not rotate on the columns, so the end cuts don't have to be all that precise. I wouldn't recommend taking the columns off of the base unless someone has already done it, because:
2) There is a bit of artistry involved in removing and replacing the columns; they have to be exactly parallel if the carriage is going to travel smoothly, and this is accomplished by the use of four flange bolts and four jack screws for each column. The lateral spacing is not quite so critical, but because the flanges are only about 6" in diameter, the "leverage" seen at the top is pretty large.
3) If the stand is partially assembled, be very careful with the it until laying it down and sliding out the weights for inspection. Mine were attached using 1/4"lag-screw hooks in holes drilled into the lead, and about four minutes after standing the whole thing up in the bed of the truck (a three-person job, by the way) there was a resounding crash as one of the weights parted company with its cable. It put a two-inch deep dent in the truck bed. It seems that the screws had stripped out before, and someone tried to pot them in with some kind of adhesive, (According to the Cochrans, every stand they had ever seen was assembled with lag hooks.) We drilled out the holes, put in brass threaded inserts, and replaced the lag hooks with 3/8-16 eye bolts..
The safest way that we could come up with to remove and replace the weights involved a ten-foot length of PVC pipe; with the stand lying down, push the weight up to the top and unhook it, then use the pipe to gently slide it down to the bottom. Each weight is about seventy pounds, and you don't want to let it build up any momentum on the way down. I wouldn't even think about trying to lift it in or out using the cable; one slip and you would probably amputate a digit or two. For replacement, the same procedure it used, but have someone at the top end feed in the cable, keeping enough tension to prevent it from looping and getting kinked when it is pulled tight.
4) The stand, assembled, is slightly more than 36" wide at the base, so you may have to remove the longitudinal base members to get it through a typical doorway. A lot of blocking and a floor jack will make this fairly simple, but be sure to securely restrain the column assembly if you turn it so that the two columns are in the vertical plane. We used big C-clamps, two-by-fours and some 3/8" lag bolts for this. (I did mention that this thing is a beast, right?)
Unless you have a wide, twelve-foot-tall door, you will probably have to stand the thing up by tilting it; if so, remember that the base is three feet wide and if you make the stand 11'6" tall you will have only fraction of an inch clearance under a 12' ceiling on the way up.
Finally: Monica Cochran took quite a few pictures while we were unloading and assembling the stand, and if you ask politely she might share them wth you. Barry and Monica are good folks and possess a wealth of information about the Deardorff equipment. They stay pretty busy, but it wouldn't hurt to ask
Good luck, be very careful, if let us all know how it goes.
Harol
Tin Can
Randy,
If the columns are off the base, then you are into territory that I didn't have to explore.
However:
The carriage consists of two assemblies that are connected only by a couple of shafts and the baseboard, so I presume that you can install each assembly onto its column, and then put the shafts in after the columns are more or less aligned. If so, the rest would be fairly easy: raise the base far enough that the side legs can be installed, and block it there (we used automotive jack stands). Bolt the legs on, lower the base so that it is resting on the front ends of the legs, and then raise the columns until they slope down to the base (sawhorses are good for this...).
The weights go in from the bottom, are pushed up to where the cables can be connected, and then allowed to slide back down. If you have cut down the columns, you will have to shorten the cables, which is straightforward at this point because there is almost no load on them.You want the cables long enough that the carriage can go all the way down, since the column tops are closed; then the carriage is up, the weights can hang out below the columns by a few inches without hitting the floor.
With the carriage at the top, the weights are at the bottom so the center of mass is as low as you can get; one person blocks the base from rolling, and the other two lift the columns to set the stand upright.
You can then finish assembling the carriage, and get the columns precisely aligned, two tasks that I have zero experience with....but if you are on good terms with Barry and Monica, you have access to about the best resource you could ask for!
Harold
Hi Harold,
I wrote to Monica and Barry and they just replied. They need a little time to find the pictures and have already been helpful!
I appreciate your continued advice, also they described your unit's refurbishment and it sounds wonderful.
I'm pretty excited I have wanted this for a while.
4 days and counting, I actually have not seen the whole stand yet, just the tubes.
Randy Moe
We would all like to see some photos of the final results. This sounds like a really cool project. Good luck.
m
Michael Cienfuegos
I'm counting my fingers to make sure I still have them all when done. An old factory saying. At the factory I worked at for 30 years, there were many missing fingers,..
I was on the Rescue and Fire team. I've seen and done a few things.
I guess I better document the whole procedure as nobody else has publicly done so, that I can find.
We would all like to see some photos of the final results. This sounds like a really cool project. Good luck.
m
Tin Can
You might want to dig out your old armored gloves, or upgrade. There have been some good improvements over the years. HexArmor is good.
My hands were damaged and my left thumb was amputated in an industrial accident, but the thumb was amazingly re-attached. The Mayo hand surgery crew is a profitable division here in farm and industrial country.
We had a few guys somehow defeat mechanical wrist restraints, double actuation switches and light curtains to, I think, some purposely chop off fingers. The screaming, the spurting blood, the guys trying to run away, were a crazy scene while waiting forever for Paramedics. Punch press are very dangerous, boring and take a certain type of worker to do it for decades. I still remember the last guy, who lost all flesh on 4 fingers, bones flattened and his foreman holding him down for 20 minutes. The foreman was a hero.
I'll be very careful.
You might want to dig out your old armored gloves, or upgrade. There have been some good improvements over the years. HexArmor is good.
My hands were damaged and my left thumb was amputated in an industrial accident, but the thumb was amazingly re-attached. The Mayo hand surgery crew is a profitable division here in farm and industrial country.
Tin Can
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