Threaded Rods
To hold our form work together we use threaded rods on walers. The 1/2″ steel rods transfer the force of the concrete’s weight from one form back through the wall to the other form making a full circle.
The rods are expensive up front but reusing them makes them cheaper than the commercial snap ties used on concrete forms. More importantly, the rods and walers are also a lot stronger than the commercial snap ties. The engineer from the concrete readymix company was telling me about being on a job where one snap tie broke and then the entire wall unzipped dumping many truck loads of concrete into someone’s home. That would be a very bad day.
Threaded Rod Cleaning Machine
After the concrete sets we spin and pull the threaded rods so we can reuse them on the next pour. The only problem is they have some concrete stuck to them. To remove the concrete Ben and Will made a little machine that scours the rods, runs a screw point through the threads and then a threaded nut to finish the cleaning. All this is high powered by a drill to make the rod spin quickly and easily.
Outdoors: 40°F/28°F Cloudy, 1/4″ Snow
Tiny Cottage: 66°F/64°F
Daily Spark: Necessity is the Mother of Invention. -Plato
Walter Jeffries Tinker, Tailor… A bit eclectic & a tad eccentric, polymath, quantum mechanic & Farmer. Also lucky at cards.
I take it that your sons have inherited their Father’s inventiveness. Good for them and for you. I just continually marvel at what you people are accomplishing.
They are very creative and of the engineering mindset like many of their kin. We’re a clan of tinkers.
yep, me too. love the ingenuity, the resourcefulness, the frugalness and the green-ness. My dad and brothers were of a like mind set. My dad’s talent developed during the Great Depression out of a need, I think — and I suppose, natural ability. My brothers, I imagine, learned at my father’s knee. anyway, I admire all of that and enjoy reading Sugar Mtn Farm. Thanks!
I’m trying to catch up on life and events at SMF; your blog is wonderful and so is the progress on your grand project. I am very impressed by Ben and Will’s threaded rod cleaning tool. It looks a little rough, as do all prototypes, but they have addressed a wide variety of issues assuring that the tool works. Well done guys, I appreciate the engineering skills which you are acquiring and using to advance this very complicated project.