Just happened to have a few sticks of pulpwood left from the bobtail truck project. Used the cap from a pill jar to line up sticks and collected with rubber band. First tried Woodland Scenics cement but either didn't wait long enough to dry or cement just wasn't strong enough to hold pulpwood together. Went with full strength white glue! Made a loop out of chain by gluing with CA cement.
In the back of my mind, I remember a sling rounding off the bottom of a pile of pulpwood, but a few sticks were left a bit more "out-of-round" on top, so a few extra sticks were added that didn't fit the pill jar cap. Just doubled the chain for sling. Oops, looks like black thread -- cable -- is too long.
Finished product looks pretty good, but will need to glue tracks to layout to get rid of knife counterbalance!
Ran across your article and was wondering how the pulpwood was loaded inot the sling? Supposedly the pulpwood had already been offloaded from trucks onto the ground for temporary storage, so how did they get the sling around the wood? Also once the wood was loaded onto a pulpwood flat, how was the sling removed without greatly disturbing the load? Thanks.
ReplyDeleteOK, so I don't check comments very often, but it hasn't been a year. . . yet!
ReplyDeleteThis operation is from truck to railcar/pulpwood rack. So, the chains are relatively easily run under the load while still on the truck and then hoisted up by the crane to be placed on the rack.
Granted, some of the pulpwood on the layout is already on the ground. That could be a problem!
At the pulp mill, the pulpwood can be stacked loosely. An "orange peel grappling hook" is used to pick up the loose sticks to be placed on a conveyor or log flume to move to the barking drum or some other form of debarking.
In the 1950's I wouldn't doubt that some of the pulpwood is actually loaded by hand, so I suppose that could help get the sticks from the piles on the layout to the pulpwood rack. . . .