26 September 2018


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.