Bad days… We all have them and so often they are caused by our own damn foolishness. With this little mishap I have only myself to blame and I do feel pretty stupid about it.
But first some background….
It has been my intention to get a Baker resaw (www.baker-online.com), as we have a need to resaw our ebony, kingwood and tulipwood cants amongst others. These woods being extremely hard, dense and somewhat abrasive require special care in conversion. In our South African operations we have perfected the process by using quality narrow bandsaw blades (see www.simonds.cc) and our own special hook angle. We resharpen using old precision German equipment (Vollmer- see www.vollmer-us.com) and get between 12 and 17 sharpenings per blade, which is very cost effective.
For our American operations we are going to use “monkeys” (www.munkfors.com) – top quality Swedish steel. Yeah, I know – US steel in South Africa and Swedish steel in USA—talk about globalization!!!
Until we increase sales substantially, we cannot afford the Baker resaw. Instead I have bought a really nice looking Italian Centauro 28 inch bandsaw, with intentions of adding a feeder unit and resawing manually. As I think I’ve mentioned before, the IRS Auctions site (www.irsauctions.com) is in my experience the best site to find good woodworking machines on auction.
Unfortunately the Centauro had 560 volt electrics and the cost implications to wire up were such that it was more effective to buy a 440 volt machine and sell it. Frustrating, but I guess you live and learn – I certainly do (and subsequently sometime forget again!). So we needed to move the Centauro out the way to make space for the new machine.
Pretty simple job – just pop it on a forktruck, have two strapping guys on either side to steady it and move it 300 yards between sheds.
Simple. Simple. Simple…
…Except that apparently it was actually me that was simple… in the head! We set off and picked up some speed… that rapidly turned into a minor speed wobble… strapping guys jumped for their lives and the machine took an awkward nosedive into the dirt.
That look, my friends, is called ‘sheepiness’. Please appreciate how we also managed to the forktruck stuck in the process!
Even more attractive from this angle (as the forktrucks have a giggle together in the background)
Amazingly we only broke the table angle adjustment device, but into many pieces and cast iron needs great skills in welding and/or brazing. All I needed to do to prevent it was to strap it to the uprights of the forktruck. Now I have got bits of bandsaw lying all over and every time I sight them I feel dumb…. that’s about $300 of damage for 30 seconds of stupidity.
Anybody with cast iron welding experience looking for a bargain???
Mea culpa. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.
