The 40 ton has been busy these days
An update on the ship breaking down to the last piece today.End of a good job just in time for Christmas.Merry Christmas all!
OK- question from someone who is not familiar with the process. How do you get the boat on the dry dock?
The cradle runs on 5 rails.Its hauled by a double drum winch,one line hauls up the others hauls back down.1'' line 8 parts on the main 7/8'' on the haulback 6 parts .The vessel is measured by some very talent ship guys to get the hull shape right .blocking is then set to conform to the hull.The cradle is lowered to acomadate the the vessels draught ,its floated in blocks adjusted and winched up.Usually they are repaired and relaunched,this boat was a deralict in danger of sinking.The company I was working for was awarded a contract by the government to decommission and dispose of this once proud ship.Lots of hazmat work and a bunch of plasma and torch work.
Great pics tugger, thanks for showing
Cool pics, only gets better when barges/landing craft are involved.
Thanks for the lowdown Tugger.:thumbsup Keep it coming.
Nice looking old crane, it must have been really well looked after all these years. I remember the 40T's and 50T's being a real bear to work on because everything was stuffed into a smaller space than the larger Americans.
Vicki Lynn ?
Cranes, Ships, and Landing Craft? Yep, you're going to need to keep posting pictures.
Yes it is or was the Vikki Lynn. She was a very well built ship,but she wasn't far from sinking on her own
Heres some more American pictures Actually my 45 ton.
Anything new?
Some pictures of the 40 ton at work. An easy vibro job on the lake and then a workout with the drop hammer on some h piles for a building foundation. We are back at the yard resting now.
I love watching drop hammers and diesel hammers work.
I gotta say my favorite is a Vulcan air hammer. I can say that now because its been years since we ve used one and forgotton the noise,broken parts and fuel bills for those 900 compressors.
Tugger are you guys working on the Massey bridge project.
Hi Hank No im not on that one.Im just a small project guy these days,just enough to keep this old iron going.
Heres another ,all packed up ready for the lowbed
sorry I clicked too many times.And no the boom isn't bent,i put a link in the top pins to lower it a bit and stay underheight on the lowbed.Its an easy way to bring 10 more feet of boom to the site.
Conventional friction truck cranes of about that size put together a lot of steel buildings around here. I don't know if that one has a torque converter, I know the bigger Americans with converters were very smooth.
Yes the 40 t0n has a torque.it works well when you stall it a bit with another function,you can very precise when lowering or booming down.Its too bad theres such a stigma on conventional cranes on jobsites these days.You can rebuild them over and over,they burn very little fuel.and can perform many different jobs that hydraulics cant ,.All things considered its really hard to increase my carbon footprint running one of these old beasts.
Around here, they would just road that type crane from job to job, or back to the shop. Do you haul it most of the time, and if so, why haul it instead of drive it?
Man did that picture bring back some memories, I drove a lot of H pile with a drop hammer years ago , you got to have good timing while driving or talk about screwing up a hoist line real fast, thanks for the pictures of the good old times
Yes Mowingman I lowbed most of the time distances and hills make it more efficient.If I drive I need to use my lowbed for the counterweight anyhow as well as go thru the motions of removing and putting it back on.I haul enough boom on my goose neck trailer for 90 feet ,then ive got a pickup on the job to. Know what you mean 4100,practice makes perfect.Even then if you don't redo the eye on the hammer every couple of days you still can get a lap full of cable in the cab,not a huge deal on a small crane like this,but a real pain having to lay down and redo the eye in the middle of a jobsite.