Wooden crane plans?
 

Hi,

I need to build a wooden hoist/crane that I can use to move some heavy (500lb) equipment in and out of a basement via a bulkhead door and sway to the front of the door.

Plans, anyone? I thought I remembred how to do this, but I'm stuck and without library access.

what are the variables? ie walls in the way how far is the door. is it even possible to reach the bottom of your stairs with out there being a floor/cieling above it. ( most common stair wells are 12 feet long with only 9 feet of that being open. and the rest of it is surrounded by walls) if you didint have access to pick the object straight up would it slide a little on the stairs as the cable/ line you used to pick it up with would have to angle to accomodate you.

are you willing to attach any thing to your existing structer ie. house. like a double 2x6 will easilly support 500 lbs. if you attached it to the walls above the stairs you could put a eye bolt in them and a pulley off it. and another 1 at the top of your doorway to the stairs. then run your rope cable whatever using thru the 2 pulleys once it was suspended someone else could push the object over on to the floor underneath pulley number 2. as for out the door you could do somthing like set it on those orange pads ( what are they called moving men available at walmart ) and just push it to where you wanted it. i know this is a verry low tech way but thereticly it wouldnt be to hard. if you wanted i could help more if you provde a few more details on what your doing and where your goign.


double 2x6 is deffintly stout enough tho.

im not sure what you mean by bulkhead door so all this may have been in vain.


i suppose it could be an outside deal like escape hatch but then you wouldnt want to sawy to the front door would ya.

hope this helps a little.

Hi,

Thanks. I guess I should have posted a link to look at one, huh?

http://www.bilco.com/foundations/sto...1&category=102

I'm going build a couple 6-ply 3/4 inch plywood beams interleaved with 1/4 inch steel plate, with a 3x3 angle iron bolted to either side to hold trolley with a chain hoist on it. The one in the basement can run out to the hatch and then one mounted over the hatch will let me move stuff in and out.

That'll work until I can learn to weld and make something more permanent.

On ships, they have overehad rail systems to haul bombs and heavy equipment through passageways. I don't need anything so elaborate, but the plans I found:

http://www.synthx.com/cgi-bin/cart.cgi?product=lifting

for the gantry to use on the outside require welding.

So I guess it's off to some adult ed class for that part.

I ended up brute forcing the equipent onto a handtruck with a 16' 1x10 and strapped it down with band clamps. It wasn't too bad to roll it up a plywood ramp over the sill. Going down the stairs was tricky, though, but it all worked without a hitch.

But I definitely need a hoist system. There's not way to have an active basement woodworking shop with no means of moving heavy stuff around and out when needed.

Have you thought about getting a Stair Climbing Hand Truck?

That still makes me the motive force. I don't want to supply the effort to horse this stuff around. The main consideration is that I am not the support for the lifting operation. I only have one back and it's kinda old.

I was referring to a truck like this one.
http://www.powermate.info/powermate.htm

I was thinking it could be useful if you need to move stuff up or down stairs some where else.

Holy Toledo! Man, that thing is awsome! I've never seen anything like it before.

I downloaded the full video. I am amazed.

Thanks for that link. I'm going to check into that. If it's cheaper than me building the gantry and rail system, it's definitely the way to go.