Moving the Press

Last week we got my Charles Brand Press out of storage. We had borrowed a truck and trailer. A forklift had lifted the press onto the trailer. Remember, it weighs about 1 metric ton. Since we had to take it apart anyways to bring it down into the basement, we decided to disassemble it on the trailer. With the help of a friend and a neighbour, Terry lifted the press down in four parts. The next few days I spent the few days in hot hot weather removing all the rust from the bottom and top rollers, the press bed and wearplate. I used a product called Krud Kutter for the rust removal which worked quite nicely along with lots of scrubbing with scrubby dish sponges and steel wool. I did some polishing with steel wool and waxed all the clean steel parts with turtle wax. It took a lot of elbow grease, but I'm really pleased how nicely the press cleaned up in the end. Below are some 'before' (at pick up) and 'after' (after rust removal prior to final polish) pictures.

(At pick up in 2016)

(Lower roller before)

(Upper roller after rust removal)

We had taken the press apart into four pieces to get it down the stairs with three guys (Chris and Terry: thank you so so much for helping!). Terry had build some support structures and rigging to help manoeuvre the pieces down the stairs, which was really helpful. Lets not think about how we'll ever get it up the stairs again quite yet.

(Moving lower roller)

Moving the press bed. We estimate that it weighs somewhere between 300-400kg.

Terry's moving jig to lower the press bed down the stairs with a rope. A nifty yoke construction kept the heavy press bed from tilting sideways.