Derrick rigging and redneck cranes

[chris_girard]

There are literally a gazillion pictures of stuff like that in Labbe and Carranco's : " A logger's lexicon".

Oh yeah, I have that book stig. Wealth of info.

 

[chris_girard]

Lots of those old big trees on the west coast were rigged with Young Iron Works blocks out of Seattle Washington. If I am not mistaken, Jerry B. rigged a lot of those Redwood pull trees using Young's blocks.

Here's one of their old-time catalog.

http://digitalcollections.lib.washington.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/CMPindiv/id/491/show/449

There's 78 pages of really great info.

 

[cory]

The joke always was, as folks are carrying those heavy mofos thru the bush, "if this is a young block, I'd hate to see the fully grown ones!!"

 

[chris_girard]

Yup, I've heard that said of Young Blocks before too. I'm sure that they were heavy MOFO's to work with day in and day out.

 

[Al Smith]

Interesting thread .I think we get caught up with modern methods which just use the same laws of physics similar to old school methods that have been around for thousands of years .If it worked then,it will work now,nothing has changed .

 

[Burnham]

https://www.masterblasterhome.com/s...Logging-Blocks&p=513246&viewfull=1#post513246

An example...

 

[Tree09]

I saved these pics and they are too cool not to post... I especially lose the circus net for fall protection lol

 

[MasterBlaster]

 

[stig]

Is that the " Gateway to the west" arch?

 

[Al Smith]

You can see the arch from miles away on interstate 70 going into St Louie .

 

[Al Smith]

In looking at the picture of the arch I wasn't aware that Pittsburgh-Des Moines Steel was involved in it .PDM was a oil tank,water tank builder that sold out to Chicago Bridge and iron .Funny according my references CBI only ever built one bridge .

 

[pantheraba]

That is pucker factor. Incredible feat. A windy day would be most troubling for me.

The net...looks like it actually caught some stuff.

 

[cory]

Amazing pics of an incredible project. Thanks for posting

 

[SeanKroll]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gateway_Arch

Thought I'd double check my trivia... They used hoses to spray the arch with water to fight thermal expansion in order to install the keystone at the top.



I went up in it as a kid.

As I recall, the thing we rode in (maybe seated???) Moved up, then sideways, up, sideways.

 

[cory]

Cool link, thanks.

 

[Tree09]

I didn't know that, good thinking there! Thx Sean

 

[Tree09]

Here's some videos that are cool. First one is an navy training video on cargo handling from ww2, shows all the components and them loading and unloading stuff.

https://youtu.be/0PJ4zTvNwwQ

This one shows some old school steel erection, using guy derricks. Lots of riding the ball, climbing columns, and stuff that would give osha a fit nowadays.

https://youtu.be/miU8lxASYfg

 

[MasterBlaster]

Whoa, swinging loads, no tag lines...

 

[Marc-Antoine]

They even added more above that, doing stupid shit. A few months ago, we bashed on the crazy Russian playing on the edge of tall buildings, but in this vid, it seems that some of these iron workers weren't much more bright than him.

 

[Tree09]

That was the job, and your life was expendable. They used to calculate how many deaths would occur on each project. On some projects, they still do btw... steel connecting hasn't really changed that much even to this day. Osha allows 25' before ironworkers have to tie off (I did hear they were thinking of changing it tho), so what they do is put the steel decking in every other floor, and a wire rope handrail around the perimeter. The use of derricks has declined with the advent of climbing cranes, but a modern jobsite really isn't that different. We often joke there's only two things that fall from the sky, bird shit and ironworkers lol. They did get rid of the ball riding and column climbing tho

 

[MasterBlaster]

Bird shit and ironworkers, hahahahaaa!

 

[Marc-Antoine]

What I mean is I don't think that jumping rope, chair equilibrium and walking blindfolded on a board were part of the job.

But nonetheless, I'm really impressed.

 

[Tree09]

Oh I completely ignored that part lol

 

[kevin bingham]

great thread!

 

[frans]

In the very first picture in this thread it does not show how to bring the block back after traveling.
Also how do you raise and lower the log without forcing the block to wander on the high lead?