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The San Franciso Fire Department makes its own wooden ladders by hand

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Re: The San Franciso Fire Department makes its own wooden ladders by hand

#171

Post by Bluestrike2 »

analog31 wrote: post #159
legitster wrote: post #2

If you get a chance to visit a Smokejumper base, I highly recommend it. One of the things you learn is that everyone on the team is required to make all of their own equipment by hand. So all of these highly trained, ex-military guys spend days on end doing nothing but sewing clothes and packing parachutes. The reasons described: - Cheaper than contracting out everything - They have a better idea of the exact specifi…

A related anecdote: There was for a long time, a history of students in certain disciplines such as physics and some areas of chemistry, making their own tools and equipment. My dad had to build an NMR as part of an analytical chemistry course. I built an exceptional amount of gear for my graduate research project. Of course there's the bit about using cheap labor. But a side result is that you have a chance of actua…

It's called scientific glass blowing, and is a pretty interesting field that highlights some of what has to go on in the background for scientific research to progress. Some other reading:

0. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/symbiartic/httpblogssci...

1. http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-caltech-glassbl...

2. https://news.usc.edu/114014/uscs-scientific-glassblower-lets...

Re: The San Franciso Fire Department makes its own wooden ladders by hand

#172

Post by matwood »

hinkley wrote: post #119
_bxg1 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My takeaway is that there are benefits to in-housing your own tools, not that everybody should. There's also a middle-ground available in the software industry: reading the code of the open-source tools you use. You can understand how your tools work without rebuilding them from scratch. Also, if you're using open-source (which most people do these days), the "cheaper" argument doesn't apply.

Those smoke jumpers aren’t making their own nuts and bolts, ropes, cloth, or felling their own trees. They’re making tools by assembly. Many of us work the same way. From what I understand every master craftsman has a small quantity of tools they either made themselves or at least modified to purpose. Tools with bits added on or ground off (eg, wrenches ground thin for tight spots, or magnetized). I class jigs as a s…

> From what I understand every master craftsman has a small quantity of tools they either made themselves or at least modified to purpose.

I could argue editors we all use for coding are tools that we 'made' by assembly. My set of plugins and settings is different from the next person.

Re: The San Franciso Fire Department makes its own wooden ladders by hand

#173

Post by [deleted] »

AdieuToLogic wrote: post #27

The Discovery Channel's "Dirty Jobs"[0] show made a segment involving the SFFD's ladder construction/maintenance crew. In it, they explained that wooden ladders are cheaper to maintain than aluminum ones and I think also discount fiberglass ladders as well. It's worth a watch if one is interested in this topic. 0 - http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/dirty-jobs/about-this-show...

[deleted]

Re: The San Franciso Fire Department makes its own wooden ladders by hand

#174

Post by aplusbi »

xeromal wrote: post #87
mindcrime wrote: post #8

There's an old saying among firefighters: "The fire service is 200+ years of tradition, unimpeded by progress". Now obviously that isn't strictly true, and SF does have some good reasons for sticking with their wooden ladders... but one can't help but suspect that sheer tradition is a somewhat significant factor. Of course some departments adopt change faster than others, and some kinds of change are adopted more rea…

I'm not sure why, but I'm reminded of that scene in Gangs of New York where two fire brigades show up to a house fire and proceed to duke it out over who has rights to put it out and plunder the building. The building ends up burning down.

[flagged]

Re: The San Franciso Fire Department makes its own wooden ladders by hand

#175

Post by wahern »

mkhalil wrote: post #67
Retric wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They could buy wooden ladders Can you point me to someplace selling 50' wooden ladders appropriate for firefighting?

For the right money, you can find the right ladder. It's not going to be cheap though, because you have to age the wood. I wonder if there is a way to age the wood to SF humidity/climate faster than real time. Just feels like there has to be.

You can dry wood faster. Lots of woodworkers build little makeshift kilns by stickering the wood inside an enclosure with a fan and, optionally, using the sun or an electric heater. Temperature control, sticker spacing, and proper stacking is key so it takes lots of experience if you don't want to lose too much wood to warping, checking, etc.

And 13% moisture is relatively high. Kiln-dried hardwood for furniture is sold at about 8-10% moisture. Dried construction lumber is usually sold at about 19% moisture--just below the point which inhibits mold growth.[1] Heck, some of the construction-grade lumber at a big box store might already be at 13% just from sitting around for months inside the store. (Though they stack them poorly and this is one reason why the pieces are often so warped.)

I assume that they keep the pieces around for so long simply because they can. If your time horizon is decades, then you lose nothing by simply stacking the wood (without much stickering) and letting it sit. That doesn't take much effort, just patience. And considering how expensive and rare such long, defect-free pieces are, why risk losing pieces? I have no doubt they could dry the pieces faster, but they have better ways to spend their time. Their only immediate responsibility is to keep the years-long pipeline of wood filled.

[1] On the East Coast with a more humid climate, homebuilders purchase pre-dried lumber for framing. On the West Coast with a much dryer climate, builders traditionally buy wet wood for framing and the wood usually dries to http://www.wood-database.com/wood-articles/dimensional-shrin...)

Re: The San Franciso Fire Department makes its own wooden ladders by hand

#176

Post by inferiorhuman »

eigenvector wrote: post #158
chrisseaton wrote: post #11

Americans seem to take a lot of pride in their fire brigades - their fire engines are still shiny and polished with more traditional signage and the fire fighters still wear helmets with their traditional shape. In the United Kingdom they wear more simple uniforms and the engines are just a box shape with no bells any more - seems a shame. Usually it's UK the has more ceremony in these kind of things.

One of the biggest differences between Europe and North America in this regard is that in European cities, emergency vehicles have to be designed to fit a 1000-year-old city in terms of width, turning radius, maximum weight, etc. This leads to a much more compact shape and shorter wheelbase. In North America streets are designed to fit emergency vehicles. You're not allowed to build a street so narrow that a fire eng…

https://www.wired.com/story/sanfrancisco-smaller-firetrucks/

Re: The San Franciso Fire Department makes its own wooden ladders by hand

#177

Post by JackCh »

eigenvector wrote: post #158
chrisseaton wrote: post #11

Americans seem to take a lot of pride in their fire brigades - their fire engines are still shiny and polished with more traditional signage and the fire fighters still wear helmets with their traditional shape. In the United Kingdom they wear more simple uniforms and the engines are just a box shape with no bells any more - seems a shame. Usually it's UK the has more ceremony in these kind of things.

One of the biggest differences between Europe and North America in this regard is that in European cities, emergency vehicles have to be designed to fit a 1000-year-old city in terms of width, turning radius, maximum weight, etc. This leads to a much more compact shape and shorter wheelbase. In North America streets are designed to fit emergency vehicles. You're not allowed to build a street so narrow that a fire eng…

A truck being small is not incompatible with a truck being a beautiful shade of red polished to a shine. Just look at Japanese firetrucks. They have some very small trucks that look great.

Re: The San Franciso Fire Department makes its own wooden ladders by hand

#178

Post by inferiorhuman »

pm24601 wrote: post #161
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And only if you're also about 40 years behind ladder tech - notice the stepladders in the "A view of the main repair facility" photo? They're nonconductive fiberglass. They're stronger than wood, lighter than wood, don't need to be oiled/varnished, don't require cutting down old-growth trees, and aren't susceptible to moisture damage. You can buy them exhaustively tested, mass produced, in whatever quantities you req…

I would bet another advantage of wood is they fail gracefully. From article: "We had one ladder here that was fully involved in a fire for 25 minutes, and the whole tip of it—six feet—was crispy. It looked like a log you pull out of a campfire," Braun says. "That can't go back in service but we were curious, so we put a new halyard [rope used to hoist ladders] on it for a load test. Even in that condition, it passed.…

Yep. That's one of the reasons wood also makes a great construction material.

Re: The San Franciso Fire Department makes its own wooden ladders by hand

#179

Post by sjg007 »

sleepydog wrote: post #146
hinkley wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the low yield strength of aluminum also plays a role here, as one guy mentions. But I’m surprised thermal conductivity didn’t rate a mention. There was a time when aluminum bikes were new but before the parts likely to bend were replaceable where many a bike owner had to buy a new frame due to misadventure. You can only bend aluminum once, then you’re done. When they started making cogsets with more than six…

There is actually a company that manufactures very high-performance bicycles out of hardwood: https://renovobikes.com/pages/why-wood They cost a pretty penny, such that I would be afraid of losing or damaging them.

Also bamboo bikes: https://booomers.com/

Re: The San Franciso Fire Department makes its own wooden ladders by hand

#180

Post by krschultz »

legitster wrote: post #2

If you get a chance to visit a Smokejumper base, I highly recommend it. One of the things you learn is that everyone on the team is required to make all of their own equipment by hand. So all of these highly trained, ex-military guys spend days on end doing nothing but sewing clothes and packing parachutes. The reasons described: - Cheaper than contracting out everything - They have a better idea of the exact specifi…

I do question this a little bit. One of my hobbies is racing sailboats, which doesn't have quite as exacting requirements as fighting wild fires, but it still requires specialized gear. I could not for the life of me make the splice required for a particular component on my last boat. It always looked good, but it inevitably failed after a few days of racing. When I bought one from an expert it would last for years.

Craftsmanship matters and you just won't become an expert building exactly the number that you need for yourself.

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