22 September 2009

7.00 at the Club, and Tam & Cyril have started at 6.00 preparing the air hammer. It looks massive as it is lifted off the deck, the crane looks pretty tiny alongside it. The air compressor is connected up to the hammer, then started up. Its not too early now which is a relief as I imagine there's going to be plenty of noise when we start hammering the piles. The air hammer is lifted onto the first pile and Cyril turns the air on. It's difficult for Tam to lower the air hammer at the same speed as the pile descends, sometimes the pile moves so quickly that the crane can't lower quickly enough, then the pile hits a harder bit and the crane has lowered too much and the hammer cants over and hits the pile at an angle. Tam first tightens the jaws on the driver then, when this doesn't fix the problem, welds some angle steel onto the jaws to keep the air hammer in line with the pile. Now the second pile...the air hammer works much better and the second pile goes in in a few minutes. In fact by the time the top of the first section is about 4 feet from the mud it seems to be getting quite firm. Once the barge is floating, more timber is loaded and the barge is moved downriver so that the downriver corner pile can be driven.

Simon Shaw