Not a VSL, I once split an AUD from its cabinet stand for transport home with a car and camping trailer. There was no difficulty separating the parts but I don’t know if the joint had been broken on an earlier occasion. I can’t remember how the drive belt was dealt with. It might have been a link type. Once home, lifting the cabinet from the trailer was a very awkward job for 2 people due to its bulk. We eventually built a lightweight scaffold frame to take a rope and pulley. Once on a flat surface movement with rollers was easy.

Boxford did set the lathe bed up on a bed of polyester filler on the base & levelled the bed before the filler set. I have a photo somewhere of the Fitting shop foreman doing one from the time I spent there during my apprenticeship.

I split a Cud from the base & the filler stayed stuck to the base itself. I don’t know if this was as a result of oil getting between the pedestal feet & the filler in use or if a release agent was used on assembly, but it separated very cleanly with no effort. The filler remained firmly attached to the base & I was careful not to damage it, both when cleaning parts and on re-assembly. I had stripped everything off the bed before removing it from the base, so was only lifting the bed & pedestals & that was quite managable at the time (I was probabaly mid-30s then).

I had no issues with levelling the machine when it was back together & the pedestals dropped cleanly and positively  into the recesses in the filler and bolted up firmly.

Very top heavy machines to move in one piece – when they start to topple they go fast and will damage you and / or the machine if they fall. You will not stop one if it starts to go  – as I found to my cost. Fortunately my bench stopped it going fully over and trapping me, and damage was limited to a slight bend (fortunately easily straightened) in the cross slide screw. But it was a close call, I am a lot more careful now & won’t try to move anything on my own again. Had I been injured, it would have been a while before my wife returned home to offer any form of assistance and this was before mobile phones were a thing.

How did you split the bed from the base?

From hazy memory (it was around 30 years ago that I did this), it was just a case of removing the bolts that hold the pedestals to the top of the cabinet & lifting the bed with pedestals attached off it.

Can’t have been particularly traumatic, or I would have probably remembered – like the toppling incident. From memory I was moving the machine out of position because I had sold it, using rollers under the cabinet. My garage floor isn’t great & I think a roller stuck. IIRC the cabinet has two bar hole points under the chip tray to put lifting bars through – far better to put bars through the cabinet & lift it with slings and a hoist from a stability POV. But I didn’t have an engine hoist at the time & the rollers method had worked OK to put it in place.