How To Move Heavy Things With Muscle Power

I found this book, er, pamphlet...

"The almost forgotten craft of shifting large weights with brains instead of engines. Beginning with practical rules for moving like Get the Ming Vase Out Of The Room - All the way out; and What Goes Up Comes Down Heavier.  This is a fascinating description of applied physics in the real world. If you move engine blocks, concrete mooring sinkers, or nothing heavier than this book from table to lap, you'll enjoy the encouraging narrative and the precise drawings. Not everyone moves coffins with marbles or sheet steel with baseballs, but you might very well find an idea to help you move Uncle Harry's monstrous bathtub out of the basement, or a reluctant oak stump out of the yard."

 ...or a two thousand pound cyclotron electromagnet out of Brother John's basement laboratory...

 I think any young person who is considering obtaining machine tools should consider picking up a copy of this. At only 47 pages, calling it a book is a bit disingenuous, but it has all of the concepts you need presented simply, and there really isn't any need for more pages to cover this topic well.

 A few months back, I fairly astonished a co-worker by nudging a pallet-load of ice-melt (weighing well over 1,000 lb / 450 kg) by myself with nothing but a 2x4.  I guess his schooling hadn't included levers and that's sad, but it sure as hell isn't his fault.

 Several years ago, several friends - regular visitors to my shop - noticed that my lathe and mill had been re-arranged and moved quite large distances in my shop.  All asked who else had helped me, and why I hadn't called them also.  And all were surprised when I told them I moved the machines - each of which weighs a bit over 1,500 lb / 700 kg - by myself.

 To move the lathe, I used a borrowed engine hoise to lift it half an inch off the floor, then I shifted it on the crane's rollers an inch or two at a time.  It was sliding as much as it was being rolled, and this is because if the load hit the floor for any reason, I wanted to minimize the impact energy.  Cast iron is fragile and the floor is concrete.

 I moved the mill using 2 inch diameter x 8 inch long rollers cut from common Sch.80 pipe, and a crowbar.  I got it up on the rollers by placing blocks and plates of wood under the corners with the crowbar until the rollers would fit under it.  Everything which happened after that (except the nature of the load) would have been instantly recognizable to Egyptians three thousand years ago.

 So this is what such little chap-books are for; they are, after all, nothing more than portable containers for knowledge which can be carried around and squirted into various minds to fill gaps.  The wonderful thing is, the book never runs out no matter how many times you do this.