Monday 13 January 2014

Nice bit of Rigging - Stein RC-3001

Had this Eucalyptus to fell today, nothing too serious, but quite a tidy lawn so we rigged everything down.


Multi-stemmed with a reasonable spread, managed to select a decent stem to have both my anchor point and a rigging point, from which we were able to rig everything down safely. Had 3 groundies on this so we were taking it in some pretty big lumps, 1 guy working the ropes and 2 clearing the drop zone.  


As I knew there was going to be a fair bit of rigging we brought the Stein RC-3001 along with us (where as we often make do with the humble portawrap)


Works exactly the same, with wraps being added as the lumps get heavier


Although being a fixed bollard its a bit more fool proof and much easier to remove slack from the system; I've seen guys get in some horrendous states with portawraps before now. 

When its notched into the tree its rated at 3 tons, and at 500kg when mounted just on the rubbers. But to be honest we rarely notch it and have dropped some big lumps with out it moving an inch. This is in part due to its bomb proof construction and the heavy duty ratchet strap that securely fixes it to the tree, (This can be done with one person but is much easier with two) 

Having used a fix bollard lowering device quite a lot in the last 12 months I would find it hard to go back to using a portawrap for big trees. If the Stein block (as we call it) wasn't such a heavy thing to carry round we'd no doubt use it for every rigging job large or small. But as it stands it is a big thing to take to every job, so we often just take the portawrap, which does the same thing, just not quite as user friendly and harder for inexperienced ground staff to become proficient at. 



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