Today saw us start the preparations for two new piles, that we’ll replace next week.
We’ve begun by marking up the piles, cutting the bottom shoulders and fitting up the wailers, as until we can excavate the existing piles we can’t measure exactly what lengths they need to be, this however kept us gainfully busy today.
We’ve used the most solid pieces of timber we could find for the wailers, some are the good sections of the old crossheads removed in previous weeks, while others are a second had grey box point timber, both should last many many years given the very high quality of the wood.
We’ve installed a good amount of termite treatment into the bottom of the timbers, should anything nasty find its way down there.
Today’s crew is now very well practised in the art of cutting bottom tongues, the top tongues are slightly different, especially given the crossheads are different in height, however the same basic skills apply.
We’ve even undertaken the first of the fixings for the angle braces onto the steel crossheads. This is a part of the trial, helping us to determine if a simpler method such as this is sufficient, we’ll be monitoring this closely over the coming months to watch for any weld cracking.
Tomorrow’s crew will be meeting at Maldon from 8am and on site from 8.30am, where we’ll do more of this welding and tightening up the bolts through the timber.
VGR Civil Blog 