So I recently heard from my boss (machine shop) that a friend of his at another machine shop claims to have moved very large (huge ironworkers and bigger) machinery w grapefruit halves. Put one half under each corner, slimy side down, and even big machines can allegedly be pushed around by one man. Supposed to work good even on rough concrete

Myth? Urban legend? Google didn't turn up much at all.....

Yeah try that out and let us know how it works out for you.

Yeah try that out and let us know how it works out for you.

LMAO! That was my wife's reaction, too!

I bet the cleanup sucks. you still gotta lift it. In my experience it only takes one man to pick it up and move it with a forklift without the mess.

Try it and have your next of kin let us know how it went...

I don't believe it at all, I have used steel plates and grease on the floor to position heavy stuff before, you can use a pinch bar to get the plate under it but I can not imagine a grapefruit skin not wearing through the second you tried to slide it.

I dont think it would wear through I think it would just smash it and squeze out like mush... JOSH

I can just see my buddy's 1950's era Bridgeport sitting on 4 grapefruit halfs :laughing:

What about ice?

Sheet of ice under the machine.... and slide across a shop. Yes, it was in Minnesota in the winter :D Shop had a commercial ice cube maker, hence easy supply of sheet ice (turn off the cube wire grid!) and pull the sheets as you need them.

I just use black pipe to move things by myself.

I made carts for everything I have in my shop.....

--the only thingnot on a "cart" is my lathe, used my cherry picker to move it.

--Sherpa

Rolling it over a bunch of 2" pipe is a lot easier.

sounds like BS to me personally i like using machinery skates and porta powers... but i did see some kool Air bearings at the local machine shop supply place that float the machines on an air cushion ( for supposed one man moving, I'm sure it works great until a 15000 lb machine pins you to the wall.... squish... anybody seen Bob? )

What about ice?

Sheet of ice under the machine.... and slide across a shop. Yes, it was in Minnesota in the winter :D Shop had a commercial ice cube maker, hence easy supply of sheet ice (turn off the cube wire grid!) and pull the sheets as you need them.


We used block ice once to pull the support beams out from under a house we had repoured the foundation on. J bolts were aligned with the plate holes, and the block was put every 6 feet. We pulled the I beams and the ice melted (fairly slowly) and in 90 minutes, the house was gently down right where we wanted it.

we use those flat plastic discs that are made for moving things at work when we cant access things with a forklift. weve moved some heavy shit with them in tight spaces.

Cant say as Ive ever run into the grapefruit approach...

Had to use the greased plate approach on a 150t piece of hardware due to door clearances (sum of crane beam + total height of apparatus was bigger than the wall cutout opening allowable) That worked real nice to get the hardware through the door then poked the crane beam through to pick it up and site the hardware. The crane beam was out around 2-300 ft during the placement operation. That was the 1st of 3 installs done like that in the same building...

D.

I have these, http://www.hilmanrollers.com/LightDuty.htm but my dad gave them to me when I built my shop. If I remember correctly he paid like $1300 for the set, but I can move my 4000lb welding table by myself with these and I'm not big by any means, (150lbs)

x2 on the hillman rollers

I've heard of people using crushed ice or ice blocks to move things that are large but aren't particularly heavy and are on concrete slabs (restaruant freezer/coolers, sheds, etc). You might be able to put a drill press on a grapefruit but a normal mill or a lathe would absolutely squash the fruit into nothingness.

Sounds like a complete urban legend to me.

We use air bearings all the time...it's not a 1 man job...someone has to pull the 1" air line, but is effortless....and very stable....kill the air and she bleeds right down to a soft landing....

I have heard of people using bars of dove soap on concrete.

odd...I have heard of this, I thought an old timer was just messing with me, maybe not?

recently saw a history channel pgm on locomotives and they used a huge air skid of some type to move a 200 ton locomotive through a shop. only a few guys to do it and a HUGE compressor..

WOW! I can't believe how much of my employer's money I have wasted hiring riggers to move our machines. I could have just bought a bag of grapefruit.:flipoff2::shaking: