The Mill

Having referenced the "mill" a few times, I thought I would post a picture and short explanation of how this tool came to me.

As you can see in the picture, it is your standard issue vertical mill, or "Bridgeport" as they are commonly known by the dominant manufacturer (like Kleenex).  Honestly, until recently, I was only vaguely aware of what this type of machine could do, since I have no machining background except in having built many buildings and additions for tooling shops over the years.  However, my father spent decades in a research environment that afforded him many opportunities to teach himself some basic machining skills and, now retired, often laments his loss of access to milling and other machining equipment.  Additionally, my brother is also self-taught in basic machining work, being an engineer and also working for years in that environment.  As for me, my experience was limited to machines for wood.

I really had no desire to acquire a mill; I knew little of how to use one and therefore couldn't really see what I would do with it.  And, in my home garage-shop, like most, space is at a premium.  I knew enough about mills to know that they are heavy and bulky and if I had one in my shop, it would be set once and never moved again.  Since I am always moving equipment around (you'll recall that I mount everything on casters), the thought of an iron behemoth looming over me and collecting dust (a lot of dust) wasn't too appealing.  Still, Dad occasionally pointed out to me how various routing functions I was performing, or he was doing in his home shop, would have been so much easier with a mill.

I mentioned this to my brother one day and he told me that he had several mills at his business facility that were in long term storage [read: sitting in the parking lot under tarps], and likely to never be used again, as the technology is pretty outdated these days.  I mentioned that I would like to acquire one, thinking that the logistics would make it improbable, but feeling like I had at least addressed the possibility.

A turn of events changed a lot of things for my brother and it seemed that, as Luck was shitting on him, she was shining on me.  For in a shifting, swirling tide of excrement, a mill managed to bob to the surface and find its way across many miles to my construction yard.  I had no idea of how handy this would be.

Well, the mill lived in my warehouse for a good while, because I had no room for it at home and no idea how I was going to move it.  The thought of renting a forklift was just unappealing--spending any money at all was unappealing.  So there it sat, all summer, under a blue tarp on a wood skid.  At the time, the warehouse was full of other junk, so it was in the way, but not alone.  But I knew I couldn't let it languish in limbo forever, so I finally made up my mind to move it to my shop one day.  By myself.

I still don' really know what this thing weighs.  Guesses had ranged from a "lot" to a "whole lot".  Ultimately, I figured it weighed right around 1700 pounds, because that is the capacity of the lift gate on my stake bed truck, which seemed to be at maximum capacity when I tried to lift the mill about 2' off the loading dock.  I don't think that the lift would have made it from the ground all the way up, about 4'. 

In order to move the mill from the warehouse to the truck, then from the truck to its place in my shop, I had to come up with a dolly with +/-1700 pound capacity.  This exceeds most dollies' limits.  And, I had to lift the mill up onto the dolly, then back off again.  By myself.  I'm guessing that Archimedes never tried to move a 1700 pound mill.  The solution came in the form of four pieces of angle iron and four 3000 pound capacity steel wheels I found at the surplus store.  I simply used four grade five bolts as axles, two on each end of an angle.  The remaining two pieces of angle would be bolted across the two pieces with the wheels, to form a dolly that I sized to fit the base of the mill exactly.  The wheels were of the appropriate diameter as to allow me to cut the wood skid out from under the mill with a sawzall while shoring it up with blocking and bolt the dolly around the base.  Having carefully sized the blocking, I was able to nudge the whole thing off the final block and onto the ground, dolly attached, with a spud bar.

I then rolled the mill right onto the the dock and onto the lift gate.  At this point, the biggest challenge was in not letting this thing get away from me.  Mass in motion and all that.  As I engaged the lift, it didn't move at first, but the rear end of the truck groaned as it squatted about a foot.  Eventually, the lift gate and the truck bed met in the middle, and I rolled the thing up onto the bed and over the axles and strapped it down.  Not wanting to know what effect this mill would have on traffic, I went ahead and strapped it down with actual rigging.  If this thing got to rolling on the bed of the truck, I imagined it would roll right through the stakes and squash a car like a soda can.

The drive to my house was easy.  Once again, building my house near the office paid off in simple back roads and low speed.  In my younger days, the trip would have been about a pucker factor 5, because I would have been driving too fast.  At my current rate of wisdom acquisition, I suspect that I will be one of those old men poking along at 25 MPH in every situation.  Hard to believe how reckless I have been, looking back.

So, I backed up to my garage door, unstrapped the mill and rolled it onto the lift gate.  All this "simply rolling" may lead one to think I wasn't working too hard.  Imagine pushing something as hard as you can to get it moving, then stopping it before it rolls two inches.  About ten times.  I took solace in the fact that if the mill fell off the edge of the lift gate, I'm fairly experienced with concrete work.  What's the worst thing that can happen?  Crater.  I stood on the lift gate, steadying the mill with one hand (silly, I know) and grasped the control lever with the other.  I engaged the lever to "lower", and we went down like Wile Coyote.  The lift gate apparently had enough surface area to spread the load onto my driveway adequately so that it only gouged the concrete instead of cracking it.

I rolled the mill into position in its new home and there it sits still.  I can easily move it if I want to, because the custom made dolly is pretty much permanent.  It fits nicely in its little corner with enough clearance for the bed to move in all directions unimpeded.  Now all I had to do was figure out how to power it, since, of course, it has a 3 phase motor.