- Joined
- Oct 30, 2019
- Messages
- 225
In short - I got some cheap, big, heavy drawers. Lessons learned/major take-aways at the very bottom if you want to skip through some pictures and get to the conclusion.
At a local auction, I saw a lot of drawers listed as "Gasket drawers", but that is just what this plant used them for. They appeared to be 42x30 blueprint drawers, on two pallets:
I bid the opening bid, $25, opportunistically. I did pretty well at the auction, winning some other projects (1998 Ford Ranger); and won this lot of drawers at the $25 opening bid
I moved the top unit of one stack (which was not on a pallet, but on a purpose-built dolly with broken wheels) into the back of the truck to lighten it, and winched the other two up into the trailer. The auction/warehouse staff loaded the other stack of 3 units with a forklift.
From moving the one unit into the back of the truck, I realized these were *heavy*. I could not slide the unit on the truck's bed liner, and could barely slide it on pieces of pipe that I laid in the bed. I estimated these were at least 200-250 lbs per section, 6 total sections.
Upon getting home I made some room in the garage (2 other loads of auction stuff already had been dumped in there, including a gearhead drill press for a friend of mine)
After backing the trailer in I worked on a plan for how to unload. My pallet jack doesn't do well on this trailer due to the separated steel deck, especially with items this heavy. However it wouldn't be able to get under the front stack, which is on that low-sitting broken dolly.
I ended up using my 6' prybar to work the rear stack/pallet backwards a few inches, so I could fit chains down around the front and fished underneath it.
Slinging two tow chains under it, and then hooking them together through a shackle on the hoist - I was able to lift it. This seemed stable, so I ran with it instead of lowering it and twekaing it to be more level.
Fortunately I was able to make enough space that I could roll the gantry towards the back of the garage instead of pulling the trailer forward under the suspended load and dragging the tailgate.
So these suckers are heavy...
This palletized stack of 3 units tipped the scales at just over 800 lbs, roughly 250-260lbs per section once you take out some weight for the chains and pallet.
I repeated the process for the second stack
Then had to figure out how to get the 3rd piece out of the back of the truck, which was lower than the top of the stack sitting on the ground (This is how I managed to dump it into the truck at the warehouse in the first place). I ended up jacking the back of the truck up, such that the tailgate was 1/2" above the stack - so that I could slide it out and gingerly let it drop/lock into place on the others. (no pictures of this, was too focused on not losing a finger)
Now to move these into somewhere else, not in the garage, which is tight on space due to the auction and some open projects (including repairing a neighbor's mower)
A few challenges:
- There is no way for me to lift these one section at a time, to stack them in another arrangement. Even with the gantry crane and 1 ton chain hoist, I have no good way to grab and lift individual sections
- The stack on a broken dolly needs to be put on a pallet.
- I don't have a good way to get these off of the pallets once I move them somewhere else. Equally importantly, even if I did -- there's no great way to get them back onto a pallet without trashing whatever floor they are sitting on, so these will probably live indefinitely on pallets
- The stack that is already on a pallet is not centered on it. The back edge is hanging off, and the left side is. As a result the whole thing is tweaked and the drawers all stick because the frame is sagging while it is sitting like this.
Putting the stack with the broken dolly onto a pallet was pretty straightforward, and I did not take pictures. I lifted the stack over a pallet, and lowered it onto blocks on either side of the pallet (the dolly is just wider than the pallets I have). This let me remove the chains before it was sitting on the pallet. Then I lifted the pallet to lift the drawers - at which point I could remove the blocks.
The other stack which is on a pallet... is more difficult. The drawers are not wider than that pallet, so I cannot use a similar trick to solve everything
I did lower the unit onto blocks for the two sides that are hanging off of the pallet. However there were two remaining challenges:
- I needed to be able to get the front of the unit onto the front board of the pallet
- I needed to be able to shift this around on the pallet, but there is no good way to grab or pry on anything.
For the first part, I used my 6' prybar to lift the corners of the unit a bit, and put some scrap thin wall tubing under it to act as ramps, where the lower edges of the cabinet needed to come up and over a board of the pallet surface.
Then for the second challenge, I wrapped a tow chain around the bottom of the unit. I put my prybar between the chain and the pallet, using vice grips (or what's left of an ancient rusty pair) to keep the chain from sliding down the prybar. Then I could pry against the pallet and pull on the chain to move the 800lbs of drawers into the exact center of the pallet
The last step was to get these into position. With a bit of makeshift ramp to get out of the garage and into the woodshop; and some improvised floor covering (cardboard) to protect the floor in the next room - I was able to get these into a reasonable place until we decide on a final position. Leaving them on pallets means we just need some vacuuming+cardboard to move them around in that room as we finalize the layout some day.
As always, thanks for reading. If nothing else, I hope this might help others tackle their moving/improvised DIY rigging challenges. My key takeaways:
- A cheap or rented trailer is extremely helpful, instead of having to load/unload anything higher (even the back of a small pickup)
- If you have a chance to get a free or cheap (or broken) pallet jack *get it* -- this is unbelievably useful in the shop, for everything from cabinets to moving workbenches, lathes, or other tools. I find myself stacking random heavy crap on pallets when I am organizing, just to avoid lifting items multiple times when I inevitably need to move them during organization. This pallet jack was free, but I had to drive it from a friend a few states away in my hometown during a visit, and it needed new seals, entry rollers, and a lot of TLC
- There isn't much that a 6' prybar and some towchains can't move, especially if you throw in a hand winch or better. The first stack of pallets was winched into the trailer by putting a ratchet strap around it and winching it up into the trailer with a come-along, and occasionally using the prybar to keep the broken wheels from getting stuck on the inflection points of the trailer tailgate.
- The most surprising things can be *HEAVY*. These blueprint drawer units are probably at least 50-60 years old, and overbuilt so that they could be arbitrarily stacked and support the weight of the units above them (plus contents). I did attend the auction viewing prior to bidding and saw how big these were, but still underestimated the weight. However, I figured they could be winched or forklifted into the trailer and I could figure out unloading at home.
At a local auction, I saw a lot of drawers listed as "Gasket drawers", but that is just what this plant used them for. They appeared to be 42x30 blueprint drawers, on two pallets:
I bid the opening bid, $25, opportunistically. I did pretty well at the auction, winning some other projects (1998 Ford Ranger); and won this lot of drawers at the $25 opening bid
I moved the top unit of one stack (which was not on a pallet, but on a purpose-built dolly with broken wheels) into the back of the truck to lighten it, and winched the other two up into the trailer. The auction/warehouse staff loaded the other stack of 3 units with a forklift.
From moving the one unit into the back of the truck, I realized these were *heavy*. I could not slide the unit on the truck's bed liner, and could barely slide it on pieces of pipe that I laid in the bed. I estimated these were at least 200-250 lbs per section, 6 total sections.
Upon getting home I made some room in the garage (2 other loads of auction stuff already had been dumped in there, including a gearhead drill press for a friend of mine)
After backing the trailer in I worked on a plan for how to unload. My pallet jack doesn't do well on this trailer due to the separated steel deck, especially with items this heavy. However it wouldn't be able to get under the front stack, which is on that low-sitting broken dolly.
I ended up using my 6' prybar to work the rear stack/pallet backwards a few inches, so I could fit chains down around the front and fished underneath it.
Slinging two tow chains under it, and then hooking them together through a shackle on the hoist - I was able to lift it. This seemed stable, so I ran with it instead of lowering it and twekaing it to be more level.
Fortunately I was able to make enough space that I could roll the gantry towards the back of the garage instead of pulling the trailer forward under the suspended load and dragging the tailgate.
So these suckers are heavy...
This palletized stack of 3 units tipped the scales at just over 800 lbs, roughly 250-260lbs per section once you take out some weight for the chains and pallet.
I repeated the process for the second stack
Then had to figure out how to get the 3rd piece out of the back of the truck, which was lower than the top of the stack sitting on the ground (This is how I managed to dump it into the truck at the warehouse in the first place). I ended up jacking the back of the truck up, such that the tailgate was 1/2" above the stack - so that I could slide it out and gingerly let it drop/lock into place on the others. (no pictures of this, was too focused on not losing a finger)
Now to move these into somewhere else, not in the garage, which is tight on space due to the auction and some open projects (including repairing a neighbor's mower)
A few challenges:
- There is no way for me to lift these one section at a time, to stack them in another arrangement. Even with the gantry crane and 1 ton chain hoist, I have no good way to grab and lift individual sections
- The stack on a broken dolly needs to be put on a pallet.
- I don't have a good way to get these off of the pallets once I move them somewhere else. Equally importantly, even if I did -- there's no great way to get them back onto a pallet without trashing whatever floor they are sitting on, so these will probably live indefinitely on pallets
- The stack that is already on a pallet is not centered on it. The back edge is hanging off, and the left side is. As a result the whole thing is tweaked and the drawers all stick because the frame is sagging while it is sitting like this.
Putting the stack with the broken dolly onto a pallet was pretty straightforward, and I did not take pictures. I lifted the stack over a pallet, and lowered it onto blocks on either side of the pallet (the dolly is just wider than the pallets I have). This let me remove the chains before it was sitting on the pallet. Then I lifted the pallet to lift the drawers - at which point I could remove the blocks.
The other stack which is on a pallet... is more difficult. The drawers are not wider than that pallet, so I cannot use a similar trick to solve everything
I did lower the unit onto blocks for the two sides that are hanging off of the pallet. However there were two remaining challenges:
- I needed to be able to get the front of the unit onto the front board of the pallet
- I needed to be able to shift this around on the pallet, but there is no good way to grab or pry on anything.
For the first part, I used my 6' prybar to lift the corners of the unit a bit, and put some scrap thin wall tubing under it to act as ramps, where the lower edges of the cabinet needed to come up and over a board of the pallet surface.
Then for the second challenge, I wrapped a tow chain around the bottom of the unit. I put my prybar between the chain and the pallet, using vice grips (or what's left of an ancient rusty pair) to keep the chain from sliding down the prybar. Then I could pry against the pallet and pull on the chain to move the 800lbs of drawers into the exact center of the pallet
The last step was to get these into position. With a bit of makeshift ramp to get out of the garage and into the woodshop; and some improvised floor covering (cardboard) to protect the floor in the next room - I was able to get these into a reasonable place until we decide on a final position. Leaving them on pallets means we just need some vacuuming+cardboard to move them around in that room as we finalize the layout some day.
As always, thanks for reading. If nothing else, I hope this might help others tackle their moving/improvised DIY rigging challenges. My key takeaways:
- A cheap or rented trailer is extremely helpful, instead of having to load/unload anything higher (even the back of a small pickup)
- If you have a chance to get a free or cheap (or broken) pallet jack *get it* -- this is unbelievably useful in the shop, for everything from cabinets to moving workbenches, lathes, or other tools. I find myself stacking random heavy crap on pallets when I am organizing, just to avoid lifting items multiple times when I inevitably need to move them during organization. This pallet jack was free, but I had to drive it from a friend a few states away in my hometown during a visit, and it needed new seals, entry rollers, and a lot of TLC
- There isn't much that a 6' prybar and some towchains can't move, especially if you throw in a hand winch or better. The first stack of pallets was winched into the trailer by putting a ratchet strap around it and winching it up into the trailer with a come-along, and occasionally using the prybar to keep the broken wheels from getting stuck on the inflection points of the trailer tailgate.
- The most surprising things can be *HEAVY*. These blueprint drawer units are probably at least 50-60 years old, and overbuilt so that they could be arbitrarily stacked and support the weight of the units above them (plus contents). I did attend the auction viewing prior to bidding and saw how big these were, but still underestimated the weight. However, I figured they could be winched or forklifted into the trailer and I could figure out unloading at home.
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