This morning, we sliced off the bevel wedge that needed removing off the top end of the LVL Rafter so it will slide and fit tight into the metal bracket. Then, at the other end, re removed a small section of the webbing so it can fit across the 76mm thick top plate on the walls.
That done, we organised the scaffolding towers so that we could use our block and tackle to lift up the 60kg rafter beam without having to use the electric winch machines and instead use man power on ropes going through two pairs of 2 pulleys blocks to increase by 4 fold the lifting power.
But, Hey Hoy, we had an incident involving a metal collar on our extending arm at the top of the tower and the fact that it snapped apart into two pieces under the twisting action and dynamic loading on the end of the extension arm.
Broken-Connector
Fortunately, nothing came crashing down as it broke almost at the beginning of the lift operation and also we had tied ropes on each separate part to make sure that things didn’t slip off or come apart. Phew!
So after lunch, we spent an hour or so to adapt our metal poles into a more solid braced design and welded everything together to avoid weak collars and bolts.
Updated-hoist-arm
Taking our new support lifting arms back out and set it up again, to only find that the whole vertical pole started bending over under the strain this time!! Oh Drat! Gee Wizz!
Hoist-arm-bends
It looked that it really needed a second leg to support the other end of the extended arm so we fetched our old wooden crane legs, reduced the height of where the horizontal pole fits through the wooden section and tried getting it to marry up and connect to our support arm. But it was leaning over drunken and we couldn’t get it to slide all the way into the metal collar!!
Supporting-hoist-arm-with-a-leg
At this point, it started raining so we abandoned this work and went back indoors to carry on with our vacuum unit instead. PHEW!