Euroa Over-Engineering Part 2

In part one, your three adventurers managed to lay the foundations for the bridge over Castle Creek. Day two dawned with two tasks ahead: laying the floor of the bridge between the new supports on sandy bank and the landing root; and constructing the ramps up to the bridge and from the bridge to the far bank.

First the side supports need to be made roughly parallel, involving some work on the trunk on the right hand side. The left side log was remarkably straight and required little work.


There was an old dismantled wooden fence that the team had identified as suitable material for the bridge floor. It had been dumped in a 6 pile high mound near the homestead. In pulling the pile apart, we disturbed a local who'd been enjoying a long winter's slumber.


However, the fencing was perfect for the bridge, and the idea to hold the fence together and attach in slabs saved a heap of time, even if a large number of the nails had to be replaced with new ones. From downstream you can admire the efforts to provide a straight edge on the far edge, at the same time observing the supervisory efforts of Espie.


Despite the day being shortened by compulsory attendance at the Euroa Show and Shine show, day 2 came to an end with a pretty substantial looking bridge.




The only casualty of the day, despite the careful attention to relevant OH&S standards, was a tool utensil that, in the parlance, 'copped a hammering':


All that remained for day three was the construction of the ramps; and peripherals. There was enough fencing for the ramps, the only challenge was to build up the supports;


which was easy enough on the Sandy side, using (once again) old fencing supports ...


.... but somewhat more challenging on the Root side, with both an angle and dead tree to negotiate.


If you look carefully, you can see the Root side construction involved some fairly unconventional but ingenious woodwork, using, as always, off-cuts and property timber only:


The finished product positively gleamed in the late evening sun; and the last minute attention to detail from junior engineer made sure that nothing was left incomplete.


Proud of mission complete, we sat on the bridge, admiring our handy work and waiting for the much deserved gin tonic.

Euroa Over-Engineering Society Unlimited

Euroa Over-Engineering Society Unlimited

Project time again ! During the October long weekend, on a visit to a tree-change friends' place, we decided to change a few trees ourselves; change them into a bridge, precisely. Mike and Nicola have a picturesque property just outside Euroa in country Victoria. It's a great place, but there was one challenge Nicola faced when feeding the horses in the back paddock - getting across the improvised bridge (copper pipes below) - carrying a new-born, with a three year-old in tow.


For three engineers, that was too good a challenge to resist, and plans for the bridge got under way. With the exceptions of the nails, the bridge was to be built just using what could be found on the farm. The roots on the far bank make a natural landing point; step one was to construct a platform on the house side of the bank, mostly sandy, that would not get washed away.

OH&S Approved Concrete Carrying Posture

In she goes...

The solution was to use two concrete filled oil drums (previously used to hold a water tank aloft), and lay across the top of them a miscellaneous piece of concrete, next to the silo, that was earmarked for the tip.


Next stop was choosing the branches to form the underlying frames to carry the bridge. There was a large storm flattened gum tree in the back paddock, but finding 18ft straight pieces (there are no metres in an old-school project like this) was still a challenge. Eventually a first piece was identified, and the cutting technique apparently agreed upon.

I told him to cut this way ...

.. cut this way

Moving the log was no easy matter though; barley shifting the cut branch was a challenge, even for three lads in the prime of their early middle-age. Luckily there was a ute and a gold chain, and that combination was put to good use in transporting the said log closer to the creek - which also allowed some log-surfing.

Surfin' E.U.R.O.A

Next challenge was getting the log in place; the ute couldn't drive across the copper pipes dragging the log behind it; so a complicated manouevre ensued to slide the log onto the copper pipes (aka the old bridge) relying on momentum and ropes to get it across the creek before it slipped off the copper and jagged into the bank.



This somehow achieved, it was time for some mid-creek chainsawing to remove unwanted knobs,


... before the whole process had to be repeated for log number 2, which ended up being an even heavier mother.

Much to the amusement of the locals ...

what are they up to ?

And finally, at the end of day one, we have the two side supports in place, solidly supported, and ready to be built upon.

to be continued ...

Newtown in the Duststorm

The dust storm that swept through Sydney on Wednesday also left its mark on Newtown. I woke up at 6am, and noticing a strange glow outside, jumped on his bike to take a few snaps. King Street was surprisingly busy considering how early it was, but the combination of the dust and lights created quite an atmosphere.

King Street almost empty.

Even the lights were orange !

I headed to Sydney Park, hoping to capture the CBD surrounded by haze. Fat chance of course, as visibility was about 200m, but Sydney Park itself still provided some great photo opportunities.

Can't blame the chimneys for the haze !

Erskineville Oval

The view from Erskineville Bridge

See and download the full gallery on posterous

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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Just got the new Peter Temple

I just bought Truth - the latest book by Peter Temple, and sequel to the brilliant Broken Shore. Now the trick is how to avoid reading it in one sitting.

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Photo Rendering in Posterous

There's seems to be quite a difference in the photo rendering on Posterous and other sites. I've been playing around with Posterous today with photos from the Sydney Dust storm, and there's a noticable rendering effect in the Sydney Park photos in particular, that is quite pronounced here but not nearly as much so on Fotki  or Facebook. Even the large versions (e.g of Chimleys) have the swirly effect that just isn't there in the originals or on other sites. Hmmm.

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Sydney Park in the storm

Approaching

Taking photos from a moving bike ...

 

Rolling

 

Chimleys !

 

Sydney CBD is over there somewhere

 

View South

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Puzzle Time

I decided I'd make my niece her 8th birthday present this year, rather than buy something. She loves animals and puzzles, so after seeing this idea from PhotoJojo, I decided that animal photo blocks using my own photos would be the go. The idea was to go from this:



... to this:




(I've used the Fotki Stacks feature, which I blogged about here, to illustrate the transformation from the originals to the solved puzzles. Just click on the photos to navigate through them.)

It seemed pretty easy; in essence the instructions were buy blocks, print photos, stick photos, cut photos. Repeat the last three steps to do more than one side. Of course, it was not quite so easy ! For a start there were no blocks to be found so I decided to make them out of balsa wood. I had no idea how difficult it would be to create accurate cubes - luckily my mate Angus was there to give a guiding hand. We're at the opposite spectrum when it comes to attention to detail; sometimes it's too easy for me to say close enough is good enough, whereas Gus's tendency to perfectionism borders on extreme. In this case perfectionism was required as the blocks really needed to be perfect cubes for the photo stick and cut to work.


Gus's brainwave in this case was to tape the blocks together so that the rough edges were top and bottom (above); then sanding all the rough edges flat together. However this could only be done once the blocks had gone through a painstaking measure cut and first sand basis.

Production Line

Once the blocks were done, it was a matter of choosing and cropping the photos (to 15cm square, 3 lots of 5cm sided cubes), printing them on photo paper, then pasting them to the blank sides of the blocks.

Ready for the chop

After than, a painstaking cut with a stanley knife to separate the blocks; tricky the first time and even harder for the latter sides as it was important to avoid scratching the existing sides when cutting.

Shiraz Workbench

The final step was to apply multiple layers of lacquer to protect the puzzles, about 9 coats in all, outside and with an hour's drying time !


And then create a box lid with a Picasa mosaic (which created the first photo at the top of the post) and instructions and labels on the inside (below):


Great fun, but certainly not an exercise of one or two hours - lucky I started a week before the birthday. Below are the original animal photos I chose.

Toucan from Iguazu, Argentina

Chicken from Sacred Valley in Peru

Monkey from Pushkar India

Peacock from Jaipur City Palace India

Cow from Pushkar India

Llama from Salta Argentina