lumberwaiter

So a friend in NorCal has firewood, a place to keep it, & woodstoves.

But the route from B to C is circuitous. If he could lift it say 14' to the balcony....

My initial idea is a vertical steel {flag}pole, set in concrete. Say 1.5" dia. pipe. Around it slides a larger diameter cylinder; it slides up and down. A scuttle, a open U shape, is welded to the slider.

{shown tipped 90 so I can use more ASCII chars...} ___ /(fw) |(fw) |================= {pipe} |(fw) \___

My first thought for lifting it was a winch at the base, with a pulley at the top; the cable goes up the center and over the pulley; al-la a sailboat mainsail sheet.

But then I thought of garage door openers. One scheme has a long lead screw and a traveler that is threaded to match. If you took one and put the motor end at the top; it could pull the scuttle up.

Plus openers have overload clutches and reversing built in...

To slow it down, however, we'd need a long screw of finer thread, and hopefully Acme not NF. Not sure how to do that....we'd have to butt 2+ shorter rods together, weld, yet get the threads contiguous...

Comments from the RCM brane trust?

Reply to
David Lesher
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Copy a tile elevator - let it dump direct into a tub on the balcony???

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Reply to
Dennis

Some garage door openers use roller chain with a sprocket at either end, and a carrier attached to the chain and riding the rail. That'd be cheaper and easier than a screw. But you'll need some serious power (like Gunner said) and/or gear reduction plus braking to carry the load.

I'd look carefully at the 1-1/2" pipe. Is it secured at the top to the balcony? If not, it'll probably buckle. Bigger is better, and square tube might also allow use of rollers on both sides to help support the waiter part. The waiter platform would also need a rigid extension with backside roller up the pole to support the cantilevered weight of the load.

I'd want to be confident in my load calculations and welding ability on this one. Wouldn't want to drop a load of firewood on the family dog or worse, the friend.

Pete Keillor

Reply to
Pete Keillor

I use a dumbwaiter for my firewood from basement to first floor...

I use a small 110 volt hoist and pulley to double the force and halve the speed. Think I got it from horrible fright IIRC. I've used it 20 years now.

Karl

Reply to
karltownsend.NOT

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they have a larger unit too

Reply to
karltownsend.NOT

Sounds like a davit crane would be much simpler and more reliable:

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or:

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Marry that to Karl's winch and you are home free:
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--Winston

Reply to
Winston

Without having tried one, I think the Harbor Freight electric hoists look like a good deal for the money:

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pendant lets you operate them from either above or below without being under the load.

Anything with a dangling chain that can tangle with and catch on the load will be a nuisance. A greased leadscrew outdoors will collect dirt. I would build a swiveling jib crane or boat davit that operates from the top, perhaps starting with a low-cost boat trailer winch and improving it later based on experience.

These drop onto the top of an adequately strong column or post and are light enough to lift off and store elsewhere between uses.

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one I have fits nicely on 2-1/2" pipe, which is 2-7/8" OD. With the boom angled up you could lift a sling of wood over the balcony rail without having the winch and mounting post too high.

I added a boat winch on a bracket that pins to the cross-wise holes in the boom. At first I put it underneath and ran the cable through a pulley hung from the tip, then slotted the tip for a built-in pulley and moved the winch to the top so the load could rise higher, like this one:

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I like the lower one's lighter weight and the choice to operate it from the ground instead of standing in the truck bed with an unstable pile of heavy logs.

The hand-cranked winch is a reasonable compromise of cost, effort and speed for loads of up to a few hundred pounds. I wore out a couple that had narrow stamped gears by using them continuously near their rating.

You can decrease the cranking effort (and lifting speed) by shortening the cable on the reel.

jsw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

I bought and used the shorter, bed-mounted model and it worked well the few times I actually used it. It cost $80 on sale. What I can't understand is the price from some of the US mfgrs. Look at these:

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can they condone $700-$4000 prices on half tone cranes when HF sells theirs for $159 or less? I don't understand it! The $700 model is apparently their version of the inexpensive HF crane.

I doubt that'd happen unless it was in a high-theft area, as most people would either let them sit as-is or cover them with a tarp. (n=1 orbit and all that)

-- However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results. -- Sir Winston Churchill

Reply to
Larry Jaques

Keep It Simple, Stupid. ;-) You could probably build a post-climbing hoist like that, but do you really want to spend a lot of effort building a true Rube Goldberg that'll break in a month and stand there anchored in concrete as a reminder for the next twenty years?

+1 for an electric cable hoist and weld up a big basket for the firewood. Simple, Sturdy, and quick & easy to swap out the hoist motor in a few years when it packs it in...

Davit mount would work - but if you want it to look Built In you mount the winch to the eaves and put a simple angle-iron ladder track up the wall with casters (or Skateboard wheels) for guidance, so the cargo basket doesn't swing in the wind. Use something you'll be able to buy easily for many years.

I wouldn't try for limit switches on the basket, just run it manually.

Most cable winches already have a shutoff arm around the cable that the load hook bumps into to stop it on the Up direction - you might want to clamp a limit stopper ring onto the cable that hits the factory stop switch it before the basket comes off the top of the tracks headed for the eaves.

For the first few load tests, take it up 5 feet and stack empty cardboard boxes at the bottom - if it does break, that should slow down the load a bit so you don't bend the hell out of the basket.

-->--

Reply to
Bruce L. Bergman (munged human

Garage door openers are (has been noted) not powerful enough - they are designed for counterbalanced loads. They also probably have run length limiters which would time out before a geared-down setup traveled the whole distance.

Reply to
rangerssuck

--I suspect a garage door opener might not have the oomph to lift that kind of load. If you can, get your hands on an old Little Giant electric hoist; before they got all fancy and OSHA approved they used roller chain instead of proof chain. The advantage with the old scheme was you could easily be increased in length. I did this to one of 'em for lifting stuff from downstairs shop thru a floor hatch to upstairs shop and it worked a treat. I like the idea of the pulley at the top and winch at the bottom but I think you might want to splice on a braided steel cable and have only that run over the pulley. Make sure it's got one helluva good bearing! I'd also suggest stabilizing and smoothing the sliding bit of pipe on the inner pole maybe with strategically placed skateboard wheels.

Reply to
steamer

The HF type pickup truck crane (mine is from Homier) is a crude, unreliable POS until you rework it. The worn-out American hydraulics I bought for diddly at auctions and had rebuilt are still better than new HF stuff. But I can't suggest an industrial auction treasure hunt as a practical solution.

Waste of a good tarp. Also I wouldn't want to make excuses for the ugly thing for my non-engineer friends, especially the urban and LEO types who see every unfamiliar mechanical device as an instrument of mayhem.

For a sight gag you could top the column with a hefty wooden crossbar marked with vulture claw scratches, with a rusty chain attached and a BIG food bowl.

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vultures and hawks lined the guardrail on the road up and perched wherever they wanted all over the grounds. I can't imagine that happening in America.

jsw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

I didn't have an ounce of trouble with my crude crane, but I smeared wheel bearing grease on the inner tube before putting it together. Ditto the hinge points and bolts.

Ayup. Just paint it to match the house and everyone forgets it's there. ;)

Aren't they just the pits?

Cool.

My fave downspout, found in a book on gargoyles, was a pooping figure. Darned if I can find it online anywhere.

More fun:

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-- However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results. -- Sir Winston Churchill

Reply to
Larry Jaques

Bah, too much linear thinking :-). Go circular instead - think of a Ferris wheel or waterwheel with the bucket dump at the top instead of at the bottom. Would be a great conversation piece :-).

So a friend in NorCal has firewood, a place to keep it, & woodstoves.

But the route from B to C is circuitous. If he could lift it say 14' to the balcony....

My initial idea is a vertical steel {flag}pole, set in concrete. Say 1.5" dia. pipe. Around it slides a larger diameter cylinder; it slides up and down. A scuttle, a open U shape, is welded to the slider.

{shown tipped 90 so I can use more ASCII chars...} ___ /(fw) |(fw) |================= {pipe} |(fw) \___

My first thought for lifting it was a winch at the base, with a pulley at the top; the cable goes up the center and over the pulley; al-la a sailboat mainsail sheet.

But then I thought of garage door openers. One scheme has a long lead screw and a traveler that is threaded to match. If you took one and put the motor end at the top; it could pull the scuttle up.

Plus openers have overload clutches and reversing built in...

To slow it down, however, we'd need a long screw of finer thread, and hopefully Acme not NF. Not sure how to do that....we'd have to butt 2+ shorter rods together, weld, yet get the threads contiguous...

Comments from the RCM brane trust?

Reply to
Carl Ijames

The crane idea would need two folks to run, one on top, one below.

The attraction of the lead screw is that if/when something fails; it will not plummet as a broken cable lift would.

I agree re: the umph of most door openers, but how much CAN they lift?

With the pipe, I think I could anchor it with a arm from the house; that would provide some stability.

We have a good supply of thickwall ~1.5" sq tube, as seen on stuff here http://2.ly/p9sp>

I seem to recall a long length of it; but how would the scuttle be built to slide along it?

Reply to
David Lesher

Use a canvas firewood sling to minimize damage to the balcony railing. Person on ground loads it, person on balcony is idle. Person on balcony winches wood up, unloads sling and stacks wood. Person at bottom is idle. A single operator would be at the top out of danger if the load fell.

jsw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

A wireless - control winch would allow single - person operation.

Pretty much all of us have used aircraft cable to move & lift stuff. We know how to inspect for wear and replace parts long before failure is likely.

Approximately 'Not Enough'. :)

http://2.ly/p9sp>

Square tube is stronger and easier to work with.

--Winston

Reply to
Winston

The springs counterbalance the weight of the door. When you pull the cord to disconnect the door it should move easily up or down at any position.

My platform stacker uses cam followers rolling on rectangular tubing.

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The upright rails on my sawmill are channel cutoffs that weren't long enough to use for horizontal track.
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wheel frame rests on the two horizontal square tubes whose open ends are visible below it, one behind the idler pulley. When the wheel frame is off they protrude like forklift forks, ready to support a basket of firewood.

The back ends are welded to four vertical plates, one on each side of each channel, like an L lying dead on its back. The rollers that resist the cantilevered weight on the arms are bolted between the plates and ride on the outside of the channel flanges. It required fairly simple welding and machining to build.

Two 3/8-16 threaded rods raise and lower the head. Bicycle chain barely visible above the top bar keeps them synchronized. The screws are slow and inefficient to raise the head between logs, with a battery drill, though not bad to lower it by 24 or 32 16th of an inch for each new plank.

My third vertical track, the only one left out in the rain, is part of my TV antenna.

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The rails are aluminum U extrusions such as might frame a sliding shower door. The slide that holds the rotator base is simply a rectangular steel plate that fits loosely between the U's, [===].

Everything exposed to the weather is PT wood, aluminum, galvy, stainless, brass or plastic. None of these were available cheaply in the shapes I needed for load-bearing structural members like on the sawmill, and only stainless bolts for axles for the bearings and pulleys. The cam followers have removed the paint they roll over on the platform stacker so I spray it with LPS3 when I put it away and wipe off the wind-blown grit before the next use. It's protected from rain but not humidity or dust.

That's why I suggested a removeable jib crane made from fairly cheap ready-made commercial components.

jsw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

[Not sure what your stacker does/looks like...]

So how many followers do you have? One per side [4] or 2 per side [8]? How do you have them mounted so as to adjust the spacing against the tubing? I was thinking a wearable plastic surface on the traveler part.

I suspect the spouse may object to same. Plus the idea it swings over makes it an "ooops" as you hit the house.

I still like the lead screw idea, even if not built from garage door openers. A belt/pulley drive to slow the rotation down would be one approach. One problem is I know I'd need to splice several threaded rods together, while maintaining the thread integrity. Plus, I'd like larger diameter, finer threads.

Reply to
David Lesher

http://2.ly/p9sp>

It's also very easy to use a safety device on a cable lift. Spring-loaded brake systems can stop the drop as soon as the cable tension is gone. Or something as simple as a cammed mechanism or flutter plate (like those on screen door closers) will work. Guide with the square tubing, and apply the brakes to the tube to hold the box/basket up if the cable lets loose.

-- Silence is more musical than any song. -- Christina Rossetti

Reply to
Larry Jaques

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