[PSUBS-MAILIST] Gantry lift

[Douglas Suhr]

Scott, you probably won't find this little story of significant relevance
or importance in your case, but...

I've been working on a cannon project for the last few years (on and off)
building a civil war siege mortar with an 8 inch bore, but that uses the
carriage design of the 13" seacoast mortar. The barrel weighs in at exactly
1012 lbs. and the base at around 1300 lbs. for a total of well over a ton.
Our tractor won't lift that much, so dad and I found ourselves building a
gantry on the cheap!

Mobility wasn't much of an issue for us because all we needed to do was
lift up and set down on the deck of a flatbed after we backed it under the
gun. So we built two stanchions from 10 foot 6X6's and spanned them 10 feet
across with a 4X6 box channel 3/8" thick. We bought steel end caps for the
6X6 stanchions (to keep them from splitting) and put a tripod like leg
arrangement on each stanchion for stability. To keep the beam from falling
off the top of the stanchions we screwed a piece of wood into either side
of the top of each leg that stuck up past the beam to sandwich it in. We
wrapped a chain around the middle of the box channel and hooked a cheapie
"2-ton" hoist onto the chain. BANG! Done for under $500. It worked in a
pinch but I put the 2-ton in quotes because 1 ton was almost too much for
this cheapie chinese thing. We have since upgraded to a true 2-ton hoist
that I got off a friend of mine. Our cheapie hoist would occasionally
"slip" and even if you weren't having a picnic under the mortar it was
still nerve racking. Point being: splurge on a really nice hoist. ~ Douglas
S.


On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 5:53 PM, swaters <swaters at waters-ks.com> wrote:

> I didn't think of that. I will put down some plate steel.
> Thanks,
> Scott Waters
>
>
>
>
> Sent from my U.S. Cellular© Smartphone
>
> JimToddPsub at aol.com wrote:
> Scott,
> It just occurred to me that the load bearing capacity of your floor slab
> needs to be considered as well.  Each of the four wheels of the gantry has
> a contact area of not much more than 1 sq. in.  You might need to put
> something down over the area where the gantry will be when it's under load
> in order to spread the load out.  Otherwise you might end up with a cracked
> floor.  It might be a needless concern, but I've seen several
> instances where slabs have been cracked and distorted.
> Jim
>
>  In a message dated 4/2/2014 11:37:57 A.M. Central Daylight Time,
> swaters at waters-ks.com writes:
>
> Haha. Good advice Alec. I just bought the 5 ton one from Harbor freight.
> I'll get my wife Katy to put it up for me. She works out. Haha.
> Thanks,
> Scott Waters
>
>
>
>
>  Sent from my U.S. Cellular© Smartphone
>
> Alec Smyth <alecsmyth at gmail.com> wrote:
> The one that broke was a 2 ton Harbor Freight. I now use a 3 ton and its
> been fine. They also have a 5 ton, which I would suggest for a K350. These
> things are cheap and there is little price difference between them, but
> the're really heavy and I like taking the hoist down when not needed, to
> get all the chain out of the way. If you use a 5 ton, you will probably
> want to leave it in place because it weights about 80 lbs. I can reach up
> with the 3 ton hoist and click it onto the crane, but it weighs 50 lbs so
> is getting near my limit. Which all goes to prove that if you have a K350
> instead of a K250, you'll have to spend more time at the gym.
>
> Best,
>
> Alec
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 9:40 AM, swaters <swaters at waters-ks.com> wrote:
>
>>  Ok. Cool. Thanks Steve. Alec, what was the hoist you had that broke on
>> you?
>>  Thanks,
>> Scott Waters
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>  Sent from my U.S. Cellular© Smartphone
>>
>>  Steve McQueen <psub101 at indy.rr.com> wrote:
>>  Scott, I just bought a generic trolley and hoist (Harbor Freight). The
>> trolley needs to fit your beam size (mine was adjustable) and I chose
>> ratings over what I expected.
>>
>>  I didn't considered an electric vs. manual hoist at the time but you
>> might add that to your considerations.
>>
>> Steve
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Apr 1, 2014 at 2:53 PM, <swaters at waters-ks.com> wrote:
>>
>>>  I just purchased a gantry lift on craigslist in Texas. It doesn't have
>>> a trolley or chain hoist though. I started looking on the internet and
>>> there is a huge range of trolleys and chain hoists. Does anyone have a
>>> suggestion what to get and where to get it?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Scott Waters
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Personal_Submersibles mailing list
>>> Personal_Submersibles at psubs.org
>>> http://www.psubs.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/personal_submersibles
>>>
>>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Personal_Submersibles mailing list
>> Personal_Submersibles at psubs.org
>> http://www.psubs.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/personal_submersibles
>>
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Personal_Submersibles mailing list
> Personal_Submersibles at psubs.org
> http://www.psubs.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/personal_submersibles
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Personal_Submersibles mailing list
> Personal_Submersibles at psubs.org
> http://www.psubs.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/personal_submersibles
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.whoweb.com/pipermail/personal_submersibles/attachments/20140403/946d8e6d/attachment.html>