Check at a flooring store for a cardboard tube core off a roll of carpet or vinyl. The cores are usually discarded so free and should be about the right size. One way to ***ure that the column would arrive blemish free.
Well did you ever get it shipped? a month later guys are still giving ideas. . When I worked as a parts man in a farm equipment dealership we relieved a lot of parts with just a shipping label and maybe a bit of padding on the sharp corners. A 10 ft auger for a combine was one of them. It was a fraction of an inch within the size limit. No one suggested it but I hope you decided to pull the wheel off and put it in a flat box. Probably a clean large pizza box would have handled it. I usually hit up the local furniture store for larger boxes. I've shipped a lot of larger items that way.
Yep, these work great. I've used them to ship stainless trim. Wrap it in paper/bubble wrap until it's an "interference fit" in the tube. Than way it won't slide back and forth during transit, trying to knock the end caps off. One thing I'd worry about shipping an item without boxing it is that the item can be seen by a lot of eyes during transit. It just might end up as a "lost parcel" (end up at an employees home). Some decades back when we were kids, our family visited my Grandfather in Florida and we went to quite a few Spring training baseball games. The players were really lax, and generous about signing autographs, etc. My kid Brother was on crutches at the time and soon figured out the players were being extra nice to him. He started asking for their cracked, game used bats and was getting them (along with a few mint/perfectly good ones)! Game used, player signature custom bats. Time to fly home, no room to pack the bats. Grandpa says he'll ship them to us. Week later, a huge bundle of baseball bats, wrapped with a few bands of duct tape and our address written with Sharpie on one of the bats gets delivered. We were stunned, then later talked about how they made it through without being stolen.
Every bicycle shop and auto body shop has empty boxes. Run them through a table saw to the proper size, tape is cheap, NOT rocket science. Bob
I shipped a '40 Ford trunk lid half way across the country once. Took it to the local Greyhound terminal. The guy had me put it on a scale. After it was weighted he slapped a shipping label on it, told me to put it in the corner of the waiting area. And that was that. About ten days later the guy that bought it called and said he had just picked it up. All was good. And as I remember, it was fairly cheap. Gene.
I think UPS does charge extra for something shipped without packaging. All the Posie springs I've received came with just the ends and center wrapped with newspaper and tape. I recently received a 32 big beam and split bones that were just taped together with Duct tape and labeled. Dam lucky they got to me.
Don't do it. Cutting corners might bite the rump. Sent from my XT1710-02 using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
I shipped a column and box from a 40's Ford once. not exactly sure what I did with it, but it was in some sort of heavy duty box. if a person can't build a sturdy shipping box how do they ever build a whole car?
EXCELLENT point, If you can't take the time to box an item for shipping don't bother listing things for sale. Happy New Year! Bob
I regularly ship steering boxes. I usually wrap them in cardboard or at least cover the sharp portions in cardboard or bubble wrap and then I shrink wrap the entire mess to keep any grease from getting on the handlers. I've found it makes for a more tidy package. Shrink wrap goes a long way and is surprisingly strong when wrapped around a few times! Hope that helps.
If the part is brittle it MUST have support. Myself and a friend have each had rare cast iron exhaust manifolds arrive snapped in half. Bubble wrap may provide padding but no support against flexing. Next time I will have the manifold bolted to a 2x6.
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