What is the name of the giant staple shaped thing you can hammer into adjacent timber baulks to keep them from spreading apart? Basically a bar pointed at both ends, and bent 90 degrees at both ends to form the staple shape, which is then hammered in across the join? I thought that they were called timber cramps, but googling fails to find them.
AWEM
Don't fancy I'd enjoy hammering anything through a railway sleeper - not without the appropriate heavy kit anyway!
Are we talking buried palisade style end on; or sausage style end to end?
The chaps that did the former in our garden just concreted them in and had hammered in some ww style joiners into the end grain to hold them while it set. End to end, I should just find yourself a piece of iron bar (do the school kids still remove railings these days...) of appropriate width, but within your bending capabilities. Then *after* you've bent the ends over to say half the depth of the sleeper, drill, in the right places, slightly smaller diameter holes than the width of your bar, and *then* hammer. You could even make a nice groove for the bar to sit in.
Or if you haven't bought them yet, these guys will supply them morticed so you can just bolt them together - or you can do it yourself if you have a chainsaw.
Oh: here you go a mere £2 on ebay. Much easier!
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Basically a
width, but
hammer. You
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No, we are talking temporary bridge over a ditch to get my tractor to the other side - don't want them to spread as I cross!
AWEM
Basically a
AWEM
In that case, try long crosswise lengths of electrician's cable tray (cheap from TLC, lots of holes) and a few big nails.
Timber dogs cost good money and they only clamp adjacent timbers.
Bore hole through each one, tread steel rope or chain through each one, fix ends firmly.
Or for the really crude, staple chain link fence to it.
Builders band.
The Medway H is dead right Use galvanised square twisted nails sufficienly deep say 2.5 "
Any drilling etc of these sleepers with holes for cramps, dogs staples etc is merely a route for fungal decay entry chris
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staples
Yes Builders Band is a good idea, especially as I have half a dozen rolls in stock. Fungal decay is not a problem, they'll only be there a month, and the sleepers are pitch impregnated being real ones.
AWEM
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If the ground is reasonably firm hammer stakes into the ground at the edges of your sleepers. That's more or less how sleepers are fixed on a rail track.
Cic.
Not on any railway I have seen. Which one does that?
OK for temporary use but the iron won't lat well in oak, acidic preservative or damp condition. Use rebar to make your own joiner's dogs. Like staples they are smaller than 90 degree angles. Bend them over in a hole in any suitably anvil-ish scrap of iron.
Bollocks.
In message , Andrew Mawson writes
Couldn't you just bolt the outer two to a couple of cross timbers under the bridge?
regards
I hope you realise you just agreed with dennis? ;-)
This a temporary width extension to a brick arch bridge the majority of which has collapsed. I need to cross the stream with about 3 tons of tractor as work to repair it can only be done from one side. As the sleepers will have to be rolled off the bit of arch that survives, tying them together realistically has to be done from the top. I think builders band in copious quantities will >probably< be fine !
AWEM
I know. It _was_ hard. But even a broken clock is right twice a day.
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On a rail track the rails are spiked to sleepers so that the rails can't move and the sleepers stay in place at optimum distance. The method I suggested keeps the sleepers in position in roughly the same way except that the stakes go into the ground.
The method using builders' banding (pretty flimsy stuff) might keep the sleepers together but it could snap under movement of the heavy sleepers. For safety the sleepers need to be prevented from moving and slewing which is what staking at the sides as I suggested would do. Simply banding them together won't stop them slewing as they could easily slew as one piece.
As usual, you're more concerned about creating another tedious argument rather than the value of the method I suggested.
Cic.
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