How To: Mobile Gantry Crane Fabrication to Fill an Outdoors Lifting Gap

[Lionelgee]

Hello All,

With all the parts in place all I had to do was assemble all the parts together again.

Lots more ratchet straps to make sure that I did not have run-away A-frames and the judicious use of a ratchet strap connected to my Land Rover Defender as an anchoring point and I could line up the bolt holes in the A-frame and the I-beam.

I thought about how at least the two previous owners of the mobile gantry crane had to cut the side braces so the crane could be disassembled and I figured I could make it a bit more user-friendly. I bought some wider square hollow section that would form an outside sleeve. Then four bolts - two either side of the brace's cut locked everything back into place. I drilled all the holes in the sleeve on a drill press. It was really 'interesting' to be hanging off the top end of a ladder holding onto an electric drill when it bites into the steel and the whole drill jags and starts to rotate your arms.

I used the same specification of high tensile bolts on the brace sleeves as the bolts used to secure the I-beam to the A-frames. Something about having very heavy loads hanging above my head makes me cautious. I tend to increase safety margins accordingly.

Continued ...