The building that houses my shop is a traditional New England timber frame barn (attached panoramic photo of ceiling). The center bay is flanked by two oak bents. I have often thought it would be nice to have an XY gantry system that could lift ... as much as possible. Four hundred pounds would be nice, a thousand even better. I would use it to lift boats (off trailers and overhead) to be able to get them out of the way. The bottom of the bents are at ten feet above the floor, and the fan and lights are at fourteen feet. While fourteen would be the limit for the top of the gantry, practically it would be twelve feet or even less.
I cobbed together this design and am opening myself up to critique. The brackets are meant to slip over the bent beams - they would have a single lag bolt on the outside to be affixed once in place. Bracket and tab steel would be three-eighth inch mild steel. The "rails" would be steel pipe, at least one inch (almost 1.32 inch outside diameter). The rails would have tabs welded on the bottom - in specific locations - to match the location of the brackets, and to allow some vertical height adjustment when affixing. The beams are quite straight, but shims between the bracket and rail tab could allow sideways adjustment. The gantry would have four wheels with round channel to match the pipe of the rail to which it mates. The two wheels on each rail would be separated by perhaps two feet. The beams are twelve feet apart, so rails would be slightly less than that. The gantry is shown as an I-Beam, but it would probably be welded up pipe just like the rails. There would be some height and a web to provide structure and resist deflection. The hoist would be a lightweight 1/2 ton chain-fall.
The idea was to find a solution that was cost effective, light enough to install as components myself, and not mar the aesthetics of the timber-frame barn. So for instance, I can't put a track on top of the beams and I don't want the track on the bottom of the beams. I am quite happy with the system in just the central bay.
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