Today, we worked on designing and building a simple crane/hoist framework so we can haul up our steel pieces into place.
Using a steel pipe we had lying around (an old iron water pipe), we welded on a additional steel collar and support arm so that the whole vertical arm can slide down into the scaffold corner pole and hook around the horizontal bar to provide an anti-rotation lock.
Then, after welding together two more short tubular steel pieces, slightly larger in diameter this time, we made a a right angle bracket to both slide up and down the vertical pole and also have a horizontal pole sliding left and right too. Both can be cramped down tight using nuts welded onto the sides of the collars and a bolt driven through to engage onto the vertical and horizontal poles.
Crane-Tower-exstension-and-winch-arm
The horizontal pole has the electric winch unit hanging from it and the other end of the pole will be clamped into the wooden 6.8metre leg we made on Saturday. That is the final step to finish off this mini crane module and then we will be ready to start lifting the very long (tall) legs up into their vertical positions!