Has Anyone Moved Their Shop and Tools Out of State? Need Your Advice

I moved from California to Texas. I had a whole house full of stuff so I hired a moving company.

They came out and looked at what I had and said, “no problem”.
I had a metal lathe, and a 600 lb machining will along with a ll my woodworking machines.

-- Gary, East TX -- The longest journey begins with a single step.

Back in December, in the 6’ 4” bed of my Dodge 1500, I moved a model 520 Shopsmith, 1400 miles from Gainesville Florida to the Upper Peninsula. Also included was the 10” bandsaw, 4” jointer, 6”x48” belt sander, scroll saw, floating and extension tables, lathe hardware, saw blades & arbors, 12” disk sander, Incra 5000 sled, Porter Cable router, and a lot of small tools and accesories – basically a whole workshop, plus several boxes of my wife’s stuff. It all fit under my vinyl cover in about 20 inches of height. Quite a packing job – but it all fit! I was even able to average 18 mpg for the whole two day trip. There are some advantages to combination machines.

-- "Heaven is North of the Bridge"

If you have a professional do it for you make sure that you strip the machine down and carefully pack accessories and parts. I would take the fences off of all the equipment. Make sure that all the big tools are padded very well. I moved an entire workshop in a UHaul truck and had it packed tight. Everything was padded and tied securely. I wrapped all the hand tools in newspaper and packed in small boxes that I could lift easier. Hired day labor at both ends of move to help me get big stuff taken care of.

-- Genius is immediate, but talent takes time.

I moved my shop from Denver to Boston. Did it myself with a very large moving truck. I took apart the tablesaw down to the cabinet and wings then put towles inside to help reduce chattering. I sold my jointer in Denver and bough it again in Boston…lost money on that deal but it’s hard to say how things could have worked differently. I’d saw to try and move what you can and fish around on the other items if you might consider selling and see what interest you get. By the time it was all said and done, I’m glad I had my original pieces again…going through the jointer set up again out of the box was no fun, but it worked out well.

Good luck!