The Brimscombe Port Landing Stage Factory
by: David M.
Each landing stage requires a couple of days work to prepare the
materials. Unit 8 at Brimscombe Port has
seen better days, but it is secure and mostly watertight, and the lack of mains
power does not put us off. We can
usually work near the large front doors for daylight, and in the depths our
eyes do get used to the gloom.
The timber frames have their cross pieces cut on a sliding mitre saw,
and frames are assembled using steel right-angle brackets and screws. We can knock these up in less than 30 minutes
now. Each stage has 5 frames.
The open box beam piles come in 4.8m lengths, and for typical stages
like Bowbridge West we cut 91cm off for making cross-beams, leaving 3.9m piles
for the water side, 10 per stage. For
this we use an industrial angle grinder with 10in disc, too heavy to wield all
day (IMO) unless you let gravity help the machine to do the work. Cutting a pile through takes about 10
minutes. The hard part is carrying them
from the storage area, four can manage but five is better.
In the picture is a stack of piles we prepared in the last few days,
part of our preparation for the next four landing stages east of Stroud.
The cross-pieces need to be drilled to fit the end plates to enable
them to join pairs of piles together.
The “mag drill” has an electromagnetic base which locks the machine onto
the steel material, and the holes are made not with a drill bit but with a
hollow milling tool. Piles are also pre-drilled
to take bolts to fit the frames to.
Once the work barge is moved up through the locks, we’ll shortly be
starting the landing stage west of Bowbridge Lock.
