I'm Kinda Proud of That Thing

A couple years ago a friend stopped by because he was headed across the state and the load he had on his trailer was way too heavy. He had bought some industrial surplus items. He had 5 of these jib cranes on and they probably weighed about 1 ton each and several other hefty pieces. So he needed to lose some weight. We helped him unload 3 of the cranes.

After a few months it became obvious that we were the proud owners of three 30 foot jib cranes. Without a big piece of equipment there was no way I was going to move these things. They sat next to the driveway adding to the classy nature of the farm. After two years I started getting hints that they needed to go.

So one day when I was feeling ambitious I drug the cutting torch down the driveway and proceeded to cut them up. They are made of 10 inch I-beam with an 8 inch channel welded on top, plus some ears and guy supports out of 1/2 by 3 flat bar. I cut the beam part up into 8 and 10 foot pieces so they could be moved. They still weighed about 3oo pounds each. Now moving these posed a problem...

Recently I scrapped out a rototiller that we couldn't get parts to repair. I took some scrap metal from the jibs, the wheels and tires from the tiller and a trailer hitch to create the heavy object skidding device (HOSD).

The hardest part of using them is lifting the one end up and having junior back up while holding it. We moved three of them to the shop for alterations into some serious fence posts. We then skidded those to their perspective resting places. Last Saturday we moved all of the other pieces to a less visible storage spot. Boy those 10 foot pieces are heavy!