craaaaaaaaane!

I discovered a variety of things when I started machining, that mostly don't apply to woodworking, and one of them is that your tools and your raw materials are incredibly heavy. A 4' x 8' sheet of 3/4" plywood weighs an awkward 60-70 pounds. A steel plate of those dimensions is nearly 1,000 pounds, and you'd use it to bridge a trench in a high-traffic road.

I also learned that everything—except liquids, almost always—is a spring that compresses and expands, and will usually travel far more than the tolerance of even our little hobbyist engine lathes, which can usually hit 0.0005" if they're bolted down. (The lathe can. The machinist...?)

Setting aside all the variables, you're not far off to squint a little and expect that wood will change shape ("move") at least 0.016" (1/64") over the course of a year's humidity changes. A surprising (to me) number of wood joinery techniques are designed allow for this movement, and either hide it, or make it look pretty, but mere mortals won't find 1/64" a useful scale to work in. My skinniest, most fragile pencil, at 3mm, is 0.120". My pulse moves my entire body at least 1/64" with every heartbeat. I can't even make a mark that small.

In this world of "metal is heavy," I'm pushing 50, and in any case, trying to maneuver an unbalanced 100 lbs. lathe in a tiny space prevents me from using safe ergonomics. The tiny space of my cargo trailer also comes with a thin aluminum roof barely above my head, so there's no space for a lifter of any kind. I needed a crane.

So I had a bigger trailer built. I put some flooring down.

Then I built an overhead crane.

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