My primary job as an aerial rigger is to safely hang stuff (typically aerial apparatus, but maybe a pulley or something else) from a beam of some sort.
Tuesday, October 02, 2018
The Flywire - Issue # 36
My primary job as an aerial rigger is to safely hang stuff (typically aerial apparatus, but maybe a pulley or something else) from a beam of some sort.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
When I began to read this article, I began to think about how I would answer the question posed, “What is the one tool that you cannot do without?”. When thinking about it, my head first went to actual tools. A Crescent Wrench for master electricians, maybe a hammer or your harness if you’re a rigger, etc. When I began to read on, I was very surprised by Delbert’s answer to that question, wire rope. While this may be the thing he uses most as an areal rigger, I would never think of this as an answer to, ‘What is the one tool that you cannot do without?.” It makes the most sense though. It is a tool in the sense that it is something that makes his job easier and possible to do all the time. Something that is a huge part of a tool’s job. This definitely made me think twice about my answer to that question.
I was trying to resist the urge to debate the semantics of tool versus material, but after thinking about it a little more, I came to the conclusion that for this particular case, it’s more useful than irritating. On a basic level, I think of materials as things that are single-use and can or must be cut or modified in order to do their job. Tools are multi-use, and although you can certainly modify them, it will often negatively impact their ability to do their job (or make them into something else altogether). The more I think about it, the more I realize that aircraft cable falls somewhere in between the two. You do purchase it as a stock/disposable, but it frequently becomes a tool, as described in the article. I suppose I would conclude that aircraft cable is a raw material that is used for and as tools.
Post a Comment