Thirty-One Inches Wide

The move-the-Reinventorium plans continue apace: on Wednesday morning a team of smart and burly people from McQuaid’s will arrive, equipped with forklift, cables, and grappling hooks, to move the Golding Jobber № 8 two blocks east. This will involve hauling the press up out of the basement at The Guild, into a trailer, down Richmond Street, and then down into the St. Paul’s Parish Hall basement. McQuaid’s moved the press in 6 years ago: they do good work, are rigorous about safety, and are about the nicest movers you’ll ever meet.

My part of this plan involves ensuring that the press can be stripped down to fit through the 31 inch wide door at the other end, and that was this morning’s project.

This involved, among other things, hacksawing off an inch from the axle, removing the drive belt and the bicycle wheel it runs on, taking off the motor, and wrenching off the connecting rod.

This last bit was a challenge: it was easy to unbolt the top end, but the bottom end’s bolt is, ingeniously, accessible only through a small porthole on the inside of the press, a region of uncommon grease and gunk. After deducing that I needed a 1-1/4” socket for that bottom bolt, I got everything aligned, filed off a little bit of metal that was dinting the bolt, malleted the socket into place, and ratcheted the bolt off. I was covered in gunk by the time I was done, but the connecting rod is off:

When the morning was done, I measured the width of the press, and it’s now coming in below 31 inches wide. Unless I’ve missed something (three dimensional space is not my strong suit), we should be good to go.