by: David McGovern
Boat Landing Stages – How we
make them
Depending on the height of the towpath, in some cases we need to take a
slice out of the bank, generally taking a few hours work with the mini-digger
backed up by shovels.
The rear line of piles is then pushed in – some will recognise these as
ex-motorway crash barriers, they are made of galvanised steel and known as Open
Box Beam (OBB). They come in 4.8m lengths,
take five people to lift, and we cut the rear piles to 1 – 2m long.
Positioning of the front piles, cut typically to 3m, is done by spacing
with OBB cross-pieces and “tourniqueting” the front and rear piles together
with a heavy strop. We lift and place
the front piles in position with the crane, which then collects the piling
hammer. Before bolting a permanent cross
piece between every third pair of piles, we cut a mineral fibre ‘carpet’ around
the piles to make a barrier to weeds.
The next step is to fit wooden frames which we assemble in a workshop,
currently at Brimscombe Port, using steel corner pieces to join the lengths to
the crosses. Each of the five frames is
numbered for its place in the sequence, as a standard landing stage has a
regular height of 0.5m for boats with a slope to a lower level for canoes at
0.3m. Frames are bolted to the piles and
to each other.
The landing stage surface is Fibregrid, a perforated non-slip
glass-reinforced plastic material, finished off with Armco barrier, and mooring
bollards concreted into every third front pile.
The bank here at Chestnut Lane has been topped with more OBB to ward off
traffic, and seed-impregnated matting laid down the slope. And once work has finished for the day, kit
stowed away, a team photo if we remember.
The Landing Stages team will soon restart its regular stage-constructing
tasks, and we are looking for more volunteers, to enable expansion of our work
from Tuesday/Thursday to include Mondays and Wednesdays. If you are interested contact Alan Jones for
a chat, and hopefully we will see you here soon! alan.gr.jones@gmail.com 01453-752396
(evenings).
