My tallest welding project ever.

[Craig in Denver]

Jerónimo:
Wow, lots of pieces. Nice job, must have taken a lot of time, cutting and fitting. Did you use mig, flux-core or stick?

How did you stand it up? Edit: AZguy beat me.

Saddling a dead horse, there's a right way and wrong way to install cable clamps. Sberry's link shows how. Somehow strength is effected, whether you put the u-bolts around the length of the strand or the rolled back stub.

[c wagner]

Why? Wouldn’t be because he saddled a dead horse, would it?

A linesman taught me that trick as well, before that I never paid much attention, now I see them backwards all over... unfortunately!

Jerónimo:
Wow, lots of pieces. Nice job, must have taken a lot of time, cutting and fitting. Did you use mig, flux-core or stick?

In his first post he mentions that he used his CST 280 with 7018 rods.

[Craig in Denver]

In his first post he mentions that he used his CST 280 with 7018 rods.

C Wagner: thank you, I slept right through that, Craig

[Schnellboot]

I saw a job today with 2 clamps installed, the mechanic did a nice job and used thimbles nice and tight and installed the clips back wards. As Ironhead said, cant saddle a dead horse, maybe someone has pics from a site with clamping instructions?
Ok, here is the first google hit. http://wolfadventures.org/Ropes%20Co...rds/clamps.htm Nice tower by the way.

Thank´s for the link sberry. After your question I started to wonder if the clamps were installed correctly. Well some of them were not. Last night the tower and wind turbine survived 100 kmh wind speeds during a storm, that said, I will return to the farm as soon as possible to reinstall the clamps in the correct way and check the turbine for possible damages to the blades.

Regards:

Jerónimo.

[Schnellboot]

How did you stand it up? How did you anchor it?

Nice job

Thank´s! First we assembled the tower on the ground, as can be seen in the picture bellow, the base of the tower is a hinge which articulates in line with one diagonal of the suqare formed by the anchors, ie east-west anchors. We selected a level curve on the gorund as flat as possible in a way that the anchor´s eyes and the base bolt where level and all lined together. Then we squared the tower on the ground refered to those east-west vertices. In that way when you rise the tower it is perfectly squared to a horizontal line on the east-west direction, which belongs to a plane that is level. Then installed the east-west cables, not to tight, and with that distance measured, anchored the south cable to the ground plus one meter to compensate the ground slope. Then we took the north cable, aded some more meters of cable for pulling with security (in case somethings fails), and slowly pulled form north with a heavy tractor. The white tube that you see atached to the tower, is a pole used to give more leverage to the pulling cable and to avoid the tractor pulling the entire thing with ground base included.


Regards:

Jerónimo.

[Schnellboot]

C Wagner: thank you, I slept right through that, Craig

Craig, total building time was about a week. The hasle was to clean the rod slag of so many spot welds, and to paint the hole thing, which took four more days. I´ve been told that inmersion painting is done by profesional builders of this type of structures, but to bath one side, each at a time would have taken more paint than is was willing to pay for and, even then, internal crosmembers would have required to be painted manually. I was wondering if there is another option to manual or bath painting, perhaps some kind of mobile spray painting tunnel?

One thing I forgot to mention was the anchors. There are 8 anchors, the inner ones are made from 2" rolled steel angle, reinforced at the tops for hammering. The outer ones are made from 2" scrap tubing I had at hand, all the anchors are 3 feet long. All the anchors are secured by a 4 feet long wood log (used on fences), the logs are buried 4 feet deep and 4 feet far from the anchors. I made 4 tensors for the outside wires, 3.5 feet long, in that way we were able to do the final adjustments of the wires without removing the clamps due to the extra margin of regulation they provide.

Thank´s!

Regards:

Jerónimo.