Ken’s crew was out with the little bobcat backhoe and made holes, so I limped out with my gouty foot and adjusted them with a shovel, shoved the hammer framework into the hole, and made a form around it.
You know how, when you’re shovelling with a spade, you push down with your foot to cut into the dirt? That puts a surprising amount of flex on your big toe.
Test fit
I had to scootch it around a bit to get the plywood for the form to fit behind it, and then I had to shovel down a bit to get the wood I cut for the sides to go in. I don’t think that building something like this is a high engineering task but I really was not in any condition to put much energy into it, so I am afraid it’s kind of half-arsed.
the form
The plan is to fill the form up to the level where the floor will be, then I’ll strip off the plywood and use a couple of tubes of silicone caulk to attach sheets of 1/4″ ABS plastic, to act as shock guards. What’s the worst thing that could go wrong? Oh, yeah, the whole mass could break and the 1.200lb (500kg) device could fall over on me.
Meanwhile, there is excitement: the trucking company announces that they plan to deliver the forging press (which is much bigger than the little 16t pink press) on monday. We don’t have a floor, roof, or sides on the building so it’s going to get wrapped in a tarp and stay in the horse’s barn for a while.
And, it finally got dry enough (briefly) for the neighbor to get his tractor down to near my truck. From there, it was a short tow. You can see how wet the ground was by the way the water squished out onto the tires.
I did a lot of limping and cursing but my feeling is “at least I can limp and curse and get the job done.” To be honest, I’d have preferred to spend the day in bed drinking hot cider and cinammon Jack Daniels, except cider and alcohol are both contra-indicated for gout. If you haven’t had gout, you probably don’t appreciate just how “contra-indicated” things can be. You couldn’t get wine into me with a taser and a turkey baster, if it’s more likely to make the gout worse.
I was cringing at the part where you used your gouty foot to power the shovel.
At the risk of teaching you to suck eggs (and a shortened life of the concrete block might be acceptable anyway) your first picture seems to show you dont have enough “cover” on the steel. Ie if the steel is too close to the surface of the concrete, moisture and oxygen will get to the steel quicker it will corrode much sooner. When the steel corrodes, it expands and cracks (spalls) the concrete. A quick wiki search on concrete cover will get you going, but roughly a cover of two of your American inches should be enough.
So, at the risk of exposing what a dumbass I am…
Why not do a complete monolithic pour for the entire floor, with a thicker chunk (and extra reinforcing) where you plan to have the hammer? Or is it the sort of thing that will end up on a separate piece of concrete regardless of whether it started that way or not?
and is there concerns about it settling at a different rate then the rest of the floor?
Anyways, glad you finally got your truck liberated.
My analgesic of choice is beer, so I don’t think I would cope with something like gout very well.
lochaber@#3:
Why not do a complete monolithic pour for the entire floor, with a thicker chunk (and extra reinforcing) where you plan to have the hammer?
Apparently doing that is a virtual guarantee of a cracked slab, eventually. So by making the hammer base a separate (but cast in) unit it’s basically already pre-cracked.
and is there concerns about it settling at a different rate then the rest of the floor?
The footer thingies on the vertical posts are intended to somewhat help spread the load. And it’s going to be resting on some very old, very packed shale. The answer is “I don’t know.” I can only try.
voyager@#1:
I was cringing at the part where you used your gouty foot to power the shovel.
Me too!
Cider *is* alcohol, isn’t it?
@bluerizlagirl, #6: In America word usage is a little different. (To say the least.) Here we’ll even say “sweet cider” but sometimes it’s just “cider” and what is meant is the fresh pressing of apple juice. Once it’s been fermented it’s called “hard cider”. That is definitely not the way those words are used all around the globe. Marcus lives in the US, so for his usage cider does not contain alcohol.
kestrel@#7:
Marcus lives in the US, so for his usage cider does not contain alcohol.
It’s more complicated than that. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. “Hard cider” is the term for alcoholic cider in Pennsylvania (where they regulate the hell out alcohol because: morals) so it’s handled differently from what I guess other people might call “apple juice.”
What I like to do is heat some cider/apple juice and add a whacking great shot of cinammon jack daniels or fireball to it. It’s yummy, but it’s contraindicated for gout. Damn it!
Even more complicated: for most Americans, there is “apple juice,” which is generally a transparent amber color and is available year-round, “cider” which is opaque and usually available in the fall, and “hard cider” which is alcoholic.
And there have been instances where parents have ordered cider to give to their kids at ball parks, not realizing it was alcoholic, then gotten arrested for corrupting minors. Yes, really.
brucegee1962@#9:
And there have been instances where parents have ordered cider to give to their kids at ball parks, not realizing it was alcoholic, then gotten arrested for corrupting minors. Yes, really.
When I was a kid I used to get smashed on pub cider all the time. My parents didn’t discourage me because I assume they thought it calmed me down, or something.