0.5 X lbs (Assuming that the bed is the same at both ends. If vertical with one end on ground, nothing)

Edited By Paul Janes on 18/01/2023 10:48:54

Fred Dibnah deduced that dragging was used to build a lot of our big castles and cathedrals (walls etc) because it was so much easier and faster than a medieval crane

So most of those big stone lumps were dragged up slopes made of dodgy wooden scaffolding

The tailstock end is way lighter than the headstock, even for a wood lathe. One should also be careful if as implied in some text above ( though not in the OP's move I think) if you are upending something while it is on its legs. The cast legs will not like the sideways stress and the often single bolt from bed to cast legs (as in eg Drummond) will break.

Remember the lever.
Say a 2×4 vertical with top just under bed height of a lathe on its legs and 6 inches away. Then a handy 3 ft 2×4 resting on the vertical and under the bed gives you about 5 to 1 advantage. Once lifted half an inch you can also swivel the job with a sideways movement of the lever. This is how stoneage man built his Henge to avoid having to hire a JCB.

If at all possible I prefer to use rollers and crowbars than mere tea-and-cake fuelled me.

I think Fred Dibnah did the Mediaeval masons a disservice there. There are plenty of contemporary wood-cuts showing their techniques, and those included lifting-gear of various types. The ashlar and decorative stones, and the massive roof trusses, were worked at ground-level; and the builders would not have wanted to damage them by dragging on rough surfaces. (The trusses were built to templates on a flat floor, then with the joints annotated by scriber marks, dismantled, lifted in parts and assembled in place.)

Though it is Tudor, not Mediaeval, I have seen displayed a lovely painting in a psaltery that Henry VIII gave to one of his wives. I wish I could give a reference to it.

It shows the building of the fabled Tower of Babylon, and despite the rather wonky sky scene and the OT Middle Easterners wearing "modern" NW European clothes, it illustrates building tools the artist would have seen used. Some of them still familiar.

The scene includes a two-drum, two-rope winch being used to raise a block of stone to masons on the scaffolding above. Why dual I do not know. It might be for weight capacity and safety, but could also be the artist misunderstanding some form of differential windlass.

Mediaeval sea-farers would have known blocks-and-tackle, and it's very likely so did their contemporary Master Masons. Dibnah organised from examining a single painting, a successful reconstruction of how the original "Iron Bridge" was put together in the 18C; but the basic principles were probably centuries old. Even as late as the 19C ex-seamen were often employed to erect the enormous beam-engines such as those we see at Kew Pumping Station. They knew how to raise very heavy lumps to considerable heights with very simple equipment, for the engine manufacturers' fitters to bolt together.

The builders of those magnificent cathedrals and massive castles must have been a lot more technically able than we tend to give them credit for, at least as far as assembling them went.

The designs sometimes failed though, usually from inadequate foundations and excessive weight; and Wells Cathedral displays a startling way to hold the building together against huge spreading-loads.

To work out, accurately how much you are lifting, you need to know the weights at each end, and how far apart they are.

If the Headstock is the heavy end, you will be lifting more than half. By the same token if the tailstock end is light; less than half the weight of the whole machine.

Somewhere between the two extremes there will be a point where the machine would balance and hang level. This can be called the centre of gravity. It is about this point that you take moments to calculate the weights at a particular point.

This is why, when moving a lathe, the Saddle and Tailstock mar moved to positions where the machine balances fairly level when lifted by a crane.

On the subject of ancient cranes, windlasses, the original, crude wooden windlass is still in the tower of Peterborough Cathedral. It is more or less a tree trunk, with handles, supported on two cruciform bearers.

Presumably the mechanical advantage provided by the length of the four handles, compared to the diameter of the trunk (which acted as the winch drum ).enabled the masons to lift /drag the ashlars into place.

Howard.