As a mason contractor, i often did concrete work requiring custom form work. Seeing the way the (in the video)stakes for formwork were done using heavy hammers (10# or 12# striking hammer in the pics) against wood stakes brought back long ago memories to me. While i had good hardworking crews, i often ended up doing that type of heavy hammer work. i was (still am as a matter of fact) usually the smallest member of my crews, but i had a knack for swinging those heavy hammers.
When driving stakes such as those in the picture above, i would usually hold the stake while one of my men would do the striking. Nobody would seem to really take a good swing so i would end up doing the swinging. The stake needed on manual guidance. i could take a full swing and, even tho most of my crew were stronger than i, they just did not get a full head of steam for driving. I would end up with the final driving of stakes.
Along the way, i had a friend who had a school bus route with somewhere around 25 - 30 busses. The contract was nearing completion and many of the busses were getting tired and the maintenance was becoming a never ending project. Whenever my work was slow, i would stop by the garage and offer to help out. Sometimes it ended up with my driving a couple of routes or just going after parts, or anything in between. At one point, over a dozen busses were "redlined" for faulty king pins. Luckilly, it happened just before a school vacation week and a full crew was employed in pulling axels and "trying" to drive out king pins. I stopped by and saw they were having great problems in that nobody had a hammer heavier than three or four pounds and it was more like they were just tickling those pins. I went for my 12# hammer and joined the crew. i was taking full swings and making much better headway. the only problem was, there was a very heavy "driftpin" requiring somebody to hold with both hands as i did the swinging. One of the men, Butch, at the garage had worked for me for several years and knew i was very accurate with that heavy hammer. He took a lot of kidding as he grabbed the pin and held on as i did my thing. He told the hecklers that there was only one man who he would hold for.
I swung away for a couple of hours before I had to take care of some of my own business. We had managed to get the pins out of about a dozen axles so I told the owner I would stop back in the morning to check on progress. When I got there, I checked out back as the bus owner was out on a bus run. There were still several axles waiting so I told one of the mechanics I would continue with the hammer if one of them would hold the pin. Nobody volunteered, so I said, “I’ll just wait til Butch gets back.” They all laughed and told me “…lots of luck on that.”
When my pal, Butch, finally showed up, both of his hands were bandaged. “ Oh Oh! Somebody else wasn’t so accurate with the hammer?”
“Yeah, it was the boss.”
Butch did end up holding the pin for me as he and I finished punching out pins. Luckilly, the contract finished up and we had no further issues with school bus king pins.
Tinker
