Saturday, April 14, 2018

2 cranes and a Birthday


The day after scheduling a crane for delivering my Bubble Bench, I had 2 cranes scheduled to get "Harmony" out of the sculpture garden and ready to deliver to Indianapolis.  It was conflicting schedules and crazy weather that made for back-to-back crane lifts - and this day landed on Meg's Birthday.  She normally spends it with her twin, but I was happy that she hung out for the lifts.  
 I had to hire a 60 ton crane from Padgett to reach out across the sloppy wet ground and lift the sculpture.  We made some "landscaping" changes... what you don't see is the 8 inches of hardwood pads that are pushed into the mud and had to be pried out at the end.
 I like this fanciful picture of Meg's that implies we're going to hook into the hook shape on the sculpture.
 There is over 100 years of experience lifting heavy things, if you add up me and the 2 crane operators.  Yet, I went with "Birthday Girl's" plan for dealing with the 5,400 lb. sculpture.
 We lifted it off the concrete pad, turned it 90 degrees and set it onto boards with 2 layers of 'softeners'.
 We used the smaller crane to hold the sculpture, while I re-rigged the main straps to lower the piece to the ground.
 Then, we re-rigged again...
...and set it onto the smaller crane.  After Mike from Padgett had finished his part and left, I power washed the sculpture and got it ready for it's trip to Indianapolis the next day.
(all photos Meg White).

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