Removing the Shop Sabre 23 from the Pallet (part one)

After a week of looking things over and thinking about a variety of ways to put the wheels on the table and remove it from the pallet, we came up with a process.  Without a forklift, we are a bit inhibited, as we can’t just raise the whole table at once, add the wheels, and set it down away from the pallet.  Instead, we’re going to have to remove it from the pallet manually.

The method we settled on is to jack each end of the table up, in turn, and add the wheels.  After adding the first set on one end, we will place a 2×4 behind the wheels there to prevent it from moving prematurely.  Then we will do the same thing on the other end.  Once the table is on wheels, we will place a tow rope around the heavy end (with the other end connected to our small Kubota tractor) and put a ramp on the light end.  We will ease the table onto the ramp, keeping the tow rope taught to ease the table down the ramp.  This will, hopefully, prevent a runaway table as it moves down the ramp. To prevent the table from going off one of the sides of the pallet, we will nail an 8 foot 2×4 to each side so that the wheels will stay tracked.

There are a few problems with this method, but we figured out how to solve each of them, at least hopefully.

1. First, we can’t get a floor jack under either end of the pallet, as there isn’t enough room and the pallet is 6 inches above floor level.  To solve this problem, we built a stand for the jack so that it will have a solid base to work from.
2. Second, removing the table from the pallet will require some sort of ramp.  It needs to be one that is solid enough to take the weight of the table.  For the ramp, we cut an 8 foot 2×4 into 4 2-foot lengths.  Then each of those was split diagonally, from corner to corner, giving us a total of 8 supports.  We spaced those evenly and then screwed a 2×4 piece of MDF onto the supports.  The result is a very solid and sturdy ramp.

The photos show the two pieces we built to accomplish the process.  Now, we just have to make it work, which we will attempt the first of the week.  We’ll report back on that in part two of this post.