6.20.2014 - First steel on the property!

Jim spent the morning getting ready to pick up the rebar - no easy task.  He made these cradles to hold the rebar in place on the truck - which required bending some rebar he had on hand and attaching it these big pieces of timber, and then bolting all of that to the bottom of the truck.

 

He also made a double cradle to hold all the rebar in place once we got it on the property.  He had to order two sizes - 1/2" and 5/8".  This way we can keep the sizes separated.

 

Jim did so much work to get all this set up - first to find this steelyard which is only about 12 miles from us but kind of in the middle of nowhere.  We passed a cow crossing sign on the way! Then to get an account with these people.  Obviously steelyards usually deal with big projects and contractors, not individuals.  But Jim got it all done.

For the carriage house, we are going to need 6500' of rebar which weighs over 5000 pounds!  Plus each piece is 20 feet - longer than the truck.  We probably have to pick it up in 3 loads because of the weight.

The first load we picked up was the 1/2" - 96 pieces which weighed probably 1400 pounds.   They had all of our rebar in 3 bundles.  They pick the bundle up with the forklift and bring it close to the back of the truck.  Then Jim had to pull pieces out of the bundle and put them into the cradle in the back of the truck.

All loaded and ready to go.  That was a crazy amount of work for Jim to do.

And, of course, that was only half of the work.  Then we had to pull all the rebar down from the truck and lay it in the cradle he made on the ground.  It sounds easy enough - just pull it out, but it's so long that the pieces that look like they are on the top of the pile when you start pulling have ended up at the bottom of the pile on the other end.  You really have to yank them out - it's a lot of force on Jim's knee doing all that too.

 

But we got it all unloaded.  We weren't sure we had enough time to drive back for another load today and get it unloaded so we'll get another load tomorrow morning.

Jim had to pretty much empty the truck to get the steel in, so then for security reasons, everything needs to be locked back up in the truck at the end of the day.  Just that work probably takes an hour getting everything locked up and put away - only to have to take it out again in the morning!