Posting up some photos from jobs I have done. This post is glass I have hung with a National 1100 Last panel on a couple of sky bridge jobs done with suction cup rigging. Not a warm fuzzy rigging! We had to pull the panels up into a track, then kick the bottom into a lower track. Very possible to rip off that rigging or shatter the panel in the up maneuver. I put my free hand on the drum to feel it for that, and watch the LMI. We'd get the panels in the track and then take half load so the glazers could shimmy it tight sideways. The last couple are actually openable doors. I wonder how many birds are getting in the building ?
Raw edge glass on suction cups in a closure. The big stuff to the right was all unitized on picking eyes. Setting form panels at sunrise, Mount Rainier in the background.
Terex HC 150 setting down onto the lowboy a couple of 400 ton hammerheads on a 400x100 barge.
National 1195 all out, jib swung and pulled. hanging canopy frames up under existing glass wall. Column steel on parking garage More remodel work around existing finishes.
Those stair assemblies are fun to rig! If I know in advance I'll be messing with them, I'll bring my chain fall to use as a balance, but that's cheating.
I had that set of gunnebo 4 ways off a tower crane, they are sweet for adjustment. A little overkill in the toolbox but I loved the adjustability. Those guys in the first glass picture, about the 6th panel in he's up there tied off and jumping on top of the panel for a while, and I knew it was not going to end well. Pretty soon they come over ( this is the first day working with that crew ), and ask if I remember the panel weight. LOL. Then they ask for panel plus 200 and start prying on it. Kept adding a little and warned them this is not a big crane, it is a fishing pole and be prepared for the jump. It never jumped, they prybared it all the way out fighting it. There was a bolt head sticking out.
I did a couple of stints on the water. Coming back to the derrick after trading tugboats with another crew. My station, the deck engineer's crow's nest, as viewed from the top of the crow's nest on the crane. Crow's nest controls. Air operated controls for deck winches, spud winches, throttles for the hydraulic deck engine and two detroits in Skagit deck winches. driving galvanized steel to replace old wood dolphins on an active ferry dock. From the skiff on the way in from a late night. Capstans on the Skagit at idle. We used them to pick apart the old dolphins to get the hammer down over them to vibe them out. They are marked "25,400 pound pull with 5" Manila rope" 5" rope, ouch! Swapping out a barge of the demoed wood piles for new piling. We were rafted where that other barge is landing. That is the ferry running way around us at the beginning of the video. Once he landed that we gave that barge a gentle shove in the direction they would take it, and cut loose. Then the contract tug took it away. Mix of new piles, HDPE sleeves, and old piling on barge. The spin fins on the end of the piles. cooking the occasional breakfast onboard. Bacon, eggs, scratch pancakes.
Hot crane on crane action! picking the Bucyrus Erie 30B with boom minus counterweight, about 85,000 pounds. Off the beach as 65' radius and then onto a barge.
The 5" rope is not as bad as it sounds ,back in the days of hemp rope I think they rated it by circumference not diameter. That 5" would around 1.5 " . I like the look of that derrick makes our little sectional rig look pretty primitive.
It has a nice chart, 185' boom. That 30B was not a problem at 65', but it did list a couple of feet when he had it over the corner to put it on the barge. Built for the Department of the Army in 1944, it was a originally a portable rig. It got all welded together and morphed over the years, repowered a few times. When I left the company they had a new Cat tier 4 to go in for the hydraulics, pulling a really nice 400 Cummins that had absolutely clean oil at 250 hours each change. I'll post up pictures of the draw works.
finishing that little story, one of the two yard whirly cranes setting a 150 excavator on the other end of the barge. The whole works went through the locks into Lake Washington and then those two were set on the beach on a little island to do some restoration work, then it all came back. I have a few hours in the whirlys, all electric.
Cool stuff skyking. Definitely not something I will see around here. LOL. can't get more land locked than me.
That derrick got all the way inland to Lewiston Idaho! I did a night dredging gig on the Duwamish river. Tucked up against Ivars on the Seattle waterfront. There was a wicked storm, and the tug was pitching up and down in front of the restaurant windows about 4 feet. I don't know if I would want a window seat for that show. The spuds were seriously stuck after that weekend. One of the derricks was a 200 ton all electric rig from the 60's, the newest floater they had. it had a pair of Waukesha 6 cylinders that made 250 volts DC. My hardhat is on there for scale. How many horsepower?
The material scow with the pilings on it looks like Navy surplus, I had one of those 40 X110 X12 . It was areally nice barge ,still painted white inside. You guys have some really nice military surplus barges working down there.
That was the stilly, 30' x 110' . I don't know her pedigree. Most of the big rigs were ex-WWII rigs, the tug above was 1945 also and built by the yacht builder Burger boats. It has the sweetest wooden wheel in it. The dump barge in the Duwamish river picture was from a shipyard in Tacoma that my neighbor worked at when he came home from Viet Nam. It had been repowered with Cat tier 4 recently. Seems silly to reduce pollution on an engine that runs so little.
I was back and forth with them, I was one of two guys with boom truck and current CDL so I did jobs with the little 8 ton boom trucks. This job I tossed the skiffs in the water every day. We had no place to tie them up. Job was putting up staging under a container terminal dock. Osprey hunting from the tip of the boom. Here's a cool tug. Twin cummins and an 11 ton boom truck crane welded to it. flat end with push bars and a deck winch to cinch up the tow. Everybody wanted it
Skyking1 what great pictures you have thanks for sharing.
the waukesha 6 in that picture above was only 315 HP at 720 RPM. The procedure was open the sea chest valve, start the 40 Kw detroit genset and wait for a compressor to build air for the air starter. Open the fuel up and start it. It ran at the rated 720 right off. The crane was limited to one function at a time, either boom or hoist. It could swing while doing either. It lumped along quietly knock knock knock knock The operator moved a lever and the rpms stayed the same but the rack opened up, she chugged smoke, KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK! Then quiet again. Earplugs plus earmuffs below decks.
First day on the National boom truck job and this rolled by on the drum. They didn't complain when I wanted new rope. Might be OK but I wasn't liking it. Something happened there.
Thing about that hemp rope is that it gained huge amounts of weight when got soaked. When the capstan would conk out on the old tug, (built in 1909, put on the reef in 2019 through no fault of her own, just too expensive to meet the new federal towing vessel regs) I would stand up on the fantail and lean back, pulling on the hawser. I could actually lean back flatter than a 45 and pull the rope, and I am 6' and 275. We popped that hawser twice in the same trip, (once was between the jetties on a rough, cold February day) we got a new Dacron hawser, stronger, about half the weight, and didn't absorb water. I thought I died and went to heaven!
little crawler bucket lift I hoisted to the roof, I think 4600 pounds. It hopped from roof to roof for a while
pouring back some remodel imbeds with a 3/4 yard bucket, hard to see against the column.
Liebherr crane facility in Rostock Germany, from a cruise ship. Big engine picker? at the Caterpillar facility across the waterway from Liebherr. I have no idea how many tons but it is stout! Edit: 1100 ton. https://www.neptunwerft.de/en/press...t_unit_of_flamenco_lowered_into_the_water.jsp
Very cool pics! Thanks for posting them.
I like that spotter lining up the piles, beats driving false work where you can use it.
Wonder how many guys backed down on rope like that when things were going sideways and sucked it into the wheel. Kind of like nylon rope we always stayed away from . Polysteel floats and saves lots of trouble.
Looking up the Clyde Frame 10 draw works from the two working lines to the old man in the back. 37,000 pounds line pull max on any drum. Looking the other way, 350 cummins to main clutch to torque converter 20 Kw "glove dryer" Here's that Cat tier 4 for hydraulics. I forgot I did work a short job after they took out the perfectly good Cummins 400 The swing motor and boom hoist are hydraulic on those rigs. The Cummins in the same spot. Lots of room in the house for tools, fluids, filters, parts. Spud winches were all hydraulic, which is problematic at times. You couldn't "sell the spuds, which is releasing the brake and dropping them rapidly. You also had to look at the tide charts and peel off enough line so a high tide overnight did not pick a spud and have you drifting all over. (It has happened!) That's one of the Skagits in the background. It has two drums with 3/4" line for anchors.
We were doing a maintenance job on Coleman docks in Seattle at the same time they were being totally rebuilt. The 400 ton hammerheads with a whole kit of hammers on the right, a crawler setting caps on the left, Smith Tower in background. We were pulling the hydraulics for the passenger way with the green roof. it was pulled up from that tower I took the picture from. Another crawler on a barge, the great wheel in the background looking up the Seattle waterfront. One of a pair of 35,000 pound cylinders that hung the passenger way, and a swinging tilting telescoping passenger bridge that was the last step onto the ferry. We were exposed to all sorts of wakes and waves, and the hook might go for a ride at any time. Cap rock operation next door We drifted that red staging underneath to support the passenger way.
Last time I worked for this company, they wanted my help in a tight little alley job under power and comm lines. The Trench safety guy and I had to two pick the trench boxes in, in two layers because we had limited rigging height. We put the two boxes together in the alley one at a time. Kinda snotty overhead, a little crowded. All this to set a fuel tank for a standby genset for a medical facility. Check out this little city crane.
Island Tug and Barge captain fell asleep and sideswiped a couple of houses near me. That tug picked up our dump barge when we were dredging the Duwamish River in Seattle. https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/ba...r-hitting-3-homes/7CUSCZ4OOVHVRBYORY7RUGM4IQ/
I had to go read the tide board on a piling behind this barge with the 4100 on it, every night. It was kinda creepy running around the Duwamish at night on the skiff. Boeing plant from the river.
Hate to admit im working with the cursed long reach today,but im providing the anchor system for this one. Hydraulic power pack 5 drum winch ,.Running tail holds on shore and 2 navy anchors offshore. We are building a habitat reef.
Actually its not bad,my knees arent burning tonight from grappling rocks
You know how to have fun!
Yes the tourists used to pay big dollars for this westcoast scenery.
I would be there in a heartbeat, grinning and working for free because we have no union agreement up there
The help would be welcomed .
I never had the luxury (or curse, however you see it) of a thumb on a long reach. They have such pee-poor performance anyway. It would save time with rocks for sure.
We ended up only doing one load of rock and the biologist was satisfied with his reef. Theres no way the long reach is any faster than the crane,after seeing what was accomplished my 22B would have done the job no problem.
Yes swing a rock with a cable that doesn't give a care is a lot faster than a noodle stick you can break
Here is the only picture I can find of the portable dredge i crewed on in '97? in Tacoma. It is in this PDF. http://www.fsdrv.org/pdf/Enews 13 Final Inlet Dredging.pdf We had put two flexi-floats on the end of it, removed the cutter head and put on some long hose and a pipe with a suction head 2x2 with water jets around the perimeter to blast the mud up off the rip-rap. They had already welded the house of a cannibalized tiny boom lift to the deck and powered it from the dredge hydraulics to be the crane lifting and lowering the head off the rocks. 8V92 and 8' pump in the house with the deck engineer. Leverman sat on a tractor seat welded to the side of the boom lift, and ran it using the ground control toggle switches. :Rolleyes, facepalm:
The wheels of hospital remodel and construction turn slowly. I set this lobby glass and the structural steel behind it in 2019. In this picture I'm setting the piece of structural steel for a future skylight canopy. That same piece of steel is still visible after they demoed all the buildings out in front of it, My former boss sent me this picture.
Beautiful building
Not my job, but I happened on this crew driving some sheet pile on the Tacoma waterfront. They did not know the model LOL " 100 ton" they said. The bulkhead does look a bit rough but not that bad, this will be fun to check back on.
Im sure they had lots of clearance but All that glass looks as scary as power lines to work beside.
yes that museum is about 60' away, and my job is inside it. Lots of cool boats! You can see the crane out there.
Awsome looking place.Id like to check it out someday. I think that crane is a 5100 thats 100 MT. Vibro looks like an APE 200 ?
Someone got creative with the track pads on the P & H. don't see very many that have a grouser every 3rd to 5th pad.
The tracks look quite bound up too.
That's Quigg Brothers out of Aberdeen, Washington. All their stuff sits next a river about twenty miles from the coast until they move it to use somewhere else.
Barnhart had their heavy panel tilter in the neighborhood. That crew was pretty fast, I came back by a few hours later and that side was mostly done. All that was left tonight was the last panel.
This was probably my last crane dispatch back in 2020. They had pranged this grain loading system on the hatch of a grain ship. The fab shop called the hall for an operator. I had Maxim's rental 800, a 23 ton boom truck. It took dozens of backs and fills to get it around the corner to the right angle dock and a dozen more to get out under the work. It filled the dock from bull rail to bull rail, and was the maximum load for the structure. The fabricators had done this before I think there are 4 conveyors there. We started by taking off the telescoping tube, which was a pain to lay down. Talk about a variable load! It was more fun to hang it back on. There were 3 picks to strip it down to the main show. The guys used chain falls to get it down to enough headroom for me to shoot the boom over the top and pick it. There was considerable confusion about the actual weight of the main nugget there. The plant produced documentation of around 8000 pounds, but it had been changed and morphed with other motors added to the platform for this or that. I got it on the hook and it was closer to 9K. @1693TA this was the picture I wanted to show you. This is a 23 ton boom truck with a 20' bed, I could not land this beyond the bed without overloading the crane. I had to set it down on the bed, which was overload of the day on the truck. Then I backed up to where I could set it down in the pocket next to the outrigger. That poor little 1 ton flatbed! So when you look at that chart compared to the 8 ton 400 model you can see what little you can pick over the end of the bed.
I just passed my OSHA 30 yesterday and that is still droning on in my head. I see several violations, but then I'm seeing violations everywhere.
The first time I laid eyes on a rear mounted swing cab/sit down boom truck, it was so obvious (I couldn't believe I didn't have one already) : it get's the boom closer to the work, increasing it's capability, it made me want to throw rocks at my (third) BTC boom truck. It was sent down the road a couple weeks later, it's only advantage being a higher payload going down the road, which doesn't apply to me.
We were motoring down the Valley Freeway in the dark and rain, and came up on this large collection of flashing lights and iron in the right lane. The end of this boom is just ridiculous! it looks as big as a bus. It was set up on a jeep like this. These are not the rig, just representative pictures. GMK7550 550 ton crane Probably one of Barnhart's cranes.
Wow!
I was surprised they were moving it on a rainy Sunday night.
I don't have any pictures of this job and I can't find any. I worked this in 2000. When I got there, it was an old steel bridge like this where the left side of that concrete bridge is now, and the railroad bridge. First job was widen the levee at the bottom under the railroad bridge with some big rock we scavenged out of the bridge approach. I had a Cat 12 ton excavator. They got me a 550 JD dozer and I graded that out, and then we walked a 3900 Manitowoc under the railroad bridge all put together. I had the boom tip on a champion forklift in neutral. Once it could clear the bridle it picked that up and swung out from under the rail bridge and the games were on. They set a long H-pile across the river to the island, and I walked across that with a target and put in some stakes. Then we rigged the dozer and set it on the island, and I graded out a flat spot to start the temporary bridge. I scalped the island down to the water line and used all that to build the approach ramp for that bridge and we built it, crane mats and some big girders. Walked a drill out there and went 90' deep for 6' main bridge columns. Looking at top picture that was old steel bridge, half of new concrete bridge, temporary bridge and that railroad bridge all shoulder to shoulder in there with just enough room for swinging. I got a 320 and then a 400 Komatsu, and got in the river with the latter from time to time. The temporary bridge was stout enough for the 3900. After all the caps were poured we walked that out there. Got a rental girder launcher, a big box girder with a set of tracks and a car on top. Got a rental 100 ton truck on the levee. Put an 82 ton link belt truck crane on the approach abutment. The 120' long 120,000 pound precast girders backed in, the 82 ton picked an end ( think about that chart!). I drug that suicide car out from under with a long cable and the 400 excavator. They have no brakes and the driver and some guys had chunks of dunnage to stop it with. Then the truck driver backed up the girder, until the 100 ton on the levee could reach it. The 82 ton boomed and lined and swung free. They had a passing plate in the rigging, a 3 hole steel plate. A pilebuck climbed up a tall ladder and hooked the 100 ton into the spare eye. 100 ton took the load. The ladder went back up and they unhooked the 82 ton. The truck backed up some more until the 100 ton could set the end on that little car on the launcher, sitting on the caps. Pilebucks chained it down onto the car, and it backed up some more until the 82 ton could take it off the truck. Repeat the passing plate dance with the 100 ton. Meanwhile, now the forces to drag that little car across the girder are provided by another operator with 600' of cable across the river in a 966 loader. Once the car got to the end of the girder, the 3900 picked it off. I dragged the car back with my 600' of cable and the excavator. Repeat this 5 times on one day, then swing the box girderlaucher over to the other side of the river and repeat the same 5 the next day.
Same time we were also building this bridge out on Oroville road over the Puyallup. They had a 40 ton RT sitting there I would run from time to time. It was a fun little gig, that is a Tee bridge with Brooks road too.
Those jobs can sure be nailbiters ,but they are fun to . Especially when the crew gets a hand in the planning and rigging. Very satisfying work.
I figured you had seen such a rodeo. None of the cranes could handle the whole beams, and there was no place to stage a machine big enough for that. We had a couple of things go wrong. On the far side set, one of the trucks backed up faster than the 82T could boom down and clear, and they contacted an outrigger with one of those beams. You know how fragile they are. It was a light touch and they got away with it. The other one was bad. We had a nice 4100 on the far side of the river from me. I was setting a big crane mat on the abutment of soil and rip rap I had built for the 3900 to sit on. I had to walk it under the railroad bridge by holding it over the river with the 400, then across the temp bridge. The drillers borrowed the 4100 and put a guy in the seat. They were pulling the 36" cans on those side piers, and it was coming up so nice they decided to set down the Ape Hammer and go at it with just a big choker. My boss was chatting with me as I sat on that big curb crane mat in the middle of the river. Nice guy and he was pleased about how it was going. They were boomed up pretty tight when the choker parted, and over she went in slow motion. the whip ball went through the boom, the old man, and it popped the cab glass with the folding boom stop pole. It stopped at about 4 degrees over backwards. It was pointed right at that mainline train bridge. It was a close call they did not mess that up too. They brought in a recovery hotshot to run the show and a big Sickle steel rental truck to lay it down. It walked over to the field there top left and got tore down to the carbody, never made a pick on that job after that. If they had tied the whip to a couple of eco blocks it would have bucked and danced but not gone over. If they had just picked the Ape back up after pulling that first section, no drama at all. I learned about sticking to the plan that day.
We built half that concrete bridge right up against the old steel bridge. the temp bridge was built with a pair of assembled beams, 12x48 x 88' times two laced with diagonal bracing to make a 4' wide beam. 88' did not reach the beach, so they drove a line of H piles and welded a cap on for that, poured a footing, then spanned that last 15' with a bunch of H steel. The last H pile location was in rip rap, so I had to tear apart the levee and walk the 320 down there and clear out a 4x8 rock. Then put the levee rock back together. When we got done I peeled the crane mats off the beams with the 400, stacked them behind me as I went for the 66 with forks to haul off. By the time I had cleared off that last bit it looked like I was breeding with the track on the 3900 backed into the approach, and I had to set my bucket on the footing and one track out of there. When we built it there was no bridge in the way, but getting those 88' long beams out of there was a fun nailbiter. There was a couple of us who were OK with tagging that much iron. We had it close to the 3900 boom to get it down under the RR bridge and then skidded them out with the loader. The last thing was rebuild the island. I reshaped all the gravel and hid the drill tailing mud in it, restored it to shape and then we picked the 550 off with the 3900. The next year they demoed the old iron bridge and built the other half of the concrete.
Dead pull on piles is bad ,you get away with a few, then things inevitably go wrong. Tieing boom down with the the whip is something we always did on the barge in the days of tapping out timber piles with a drop hammer and a choker.You couldnt help breaking chokers when your pulling and hitting the pile at the same time. It was a good thing when vibros came along. If im pulling steel piles i usually shake them all the way out then shut the hammer off and let weight shove the pile in enough to stand on its own then move to the next.Put the hammer back in the stand and your not fighting a bunch of hose and carrying a hammer over the crew. when you have a bunch standing grab them one at a time with a choker down a ways from the top then they land nice.