Shipping a Craftsman table top press?

Hello,

Shipping a Craftsman via UPS or post office can be a problem. If you are shipping by truck your OK. Best to ship by freight.
Suggest you build a solid box to accomadate the press. Use 3/4” cheap plywood. Use screws to make or plenty of nails. Most important that you secure the press to the crate so that it does not shift or move in any direction. Shippers handle freight in a rough fashion. If it is secured properly, it should arrive in good shape. Good to mark the crate “this end up” and you hope they pay attention. Again, secure it with bolts so it cannot move. I’ve shipped a press from NY to Maine this way. I don’t know of any other way to do it. To make sure it doesn’t move you can use pieces of lumber to wedge solid parts of the press to the sides of the crate. Most of this is all common sense. Good Luck! SAL

Sal — Thank you so much for this! It will definitely ship via truck since the press is too heavy for UPS or USPS. I’ve passed the information along and hope all goes well. I suppose there is the leap of faith involved too. — Deborah

Hello,
it’s also a good idea to either wire or tie down the bed plate,
or secure the arm crank, or unbolt the arm if possible.
so that the arm or bed plate does not move up or down during shipment.
Make sure the shipper ships with the ink plate and rollers taken off and put padding around the plate and rollers itself. I heard of ink plate cracking in half shipped wih it attatched to the press.

trucks tend to bounce a lot that can cause friction and the iron to snap. These presses are delicate machines… In the past I had presses ship to me broken
due to the arm snapping during transit.
Good Luck !!!! A craftsman is an excellent Press!!!!
-Marcus

Hi Marcus — Excellent! This is all great information; really appreciate it. And, thank you Briar Press for the forum :-) —Deb

yes, in agreement with marcus, promise us all that the ink plate will be taken off. there are countless tales (including my own) of these being broken during shipping and they are not fixable by a simple welding job. good luck!

Wow, thank you everyone for the tips and as soon as I receive it on this end, I’ll let you know. Thanks again and now I’m really crossing all my fingers and toes! — Deb

Very cool. I don’t know that I’d want to trust something that’s becoming as (apparently) scarce as a tabletop press to any freight company, but what can you do… other than drive cross country yourself and call it a vacation? ; )

Still pondering other ways to ship it… I think it’d almost be worth researching one of those services people use to ship their cars across the country, and see if there’s a truck coming your way. If you had permission from the car owner, it’d be nothing to securely put your press in a car trunk before it’s shipped, and then it might actually be free!

Hi again. Just wanted to let y’all know that the table top press arrived just a wee while ago and it looks to be a-ok. I’ll have to crack open the crate to get a better look and so far, no immediate visible cracks to the ink plate or anywhere else. I’ll be posting some photos on the packaging et al on flickr and here: http://www.cococello.com/wblog sometime soon. Thanks again (so very much) for all the great advice and alerting me to potential problems/concerns. — Deb

Well, this is embarrassing. All this time I thought the press I bought was a variation of a Craftsman and it is not so! Sal helped set me straight.

So, it is a table top press by the American Printing Company. I’ve been having some trouble finding information so maybe I’ll make a separate post to find out more.

Regardless, the recommendations above were very helpful for all those who want to ship and receive table top presses.

Grazie!