Well, we finally got it home without any problems today.
)
At the garage we used a 4 wheeler to pull it with a tow strap out to the edge of the garage door. From there the tow truck tilted and lowered the flat bed right up to the edge of the concrete. The winch on the truck pulled the mill up onto the bed using the same tow strap easy as pie. We left the tow strap hooked to the winch on the front, added some chains to hook it to the rear of the bed and then it was winched tight. We used two heavy duty straps looped over and around the top ram and down to the opposite side. We put another one on the same way but with the ratchet part on the opposite side of the mill. Both were tightened down and then the bed was lifted and locked for the trip to my place. I followed the tow truck about half way home to make sure everything stayed tight (it did).
After a while I pulled around the tow truck and led it to my house. Once we got there he lined the truck up with the barn door and we unhooked the top straps and lowered the bed. I laid some heavy boards down to slide the mill on using some 1" heavy wall pipes as rollers. He let out the winch line till the mill reached the boards and stopped moving. I used a 6' pry bar to tip it up just enough to get the first bar under it. one corner was stuck on one of the boards so I hooked my 4 wheeler up to the tow strap and gave it a little tug till it was completely off the bed. From there it was pretty easy to teeter the mill on the first bar so we could get the other bar under it. With just the two of us it took us about 5 minutes to get it in just about it's final resting place.
I didn't like the fact that it blocked about half the doorway where it was initally resting so I knocked a couple of boards out of the center wall for clearance. Once I had the needed room for the top ram to be able to move back fully, I was able to roll the mill back towards the wall another foot. I was much happier with it at it's new position so I tipped up the mill and pulled the bars out from under it.
With the move finally done, I started cleaning it up. It got dark before I stopped cleaning and I don't have a light over the mill area yet, so I don't have too many pics of it cleaned up yet. The only other pic I did get was a pic of the first table handle I polished up.
I'll get more pics of it tomorrow, but I'll probably start another thread for it since the topic of this thread (moving the mill) has reached it's conclusion. Once again, a big THANK YOU to everyone here who gave me tips and ideas to get this mill moved safely.:drink2:
