9 ms·

Laddering a Chimney (1978) [video]

189 points by chha 4y ago

chha 4y ago
Came across this at random, and finds it a fascinating contrast to my (and probably lots of others on HN) daily job.
- ls15 4y ago
  It's like adding functionality to legacy code
CaliforniaKarl 4y ago
Part 1 is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F04dGK1_wYA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F04dGK1_wYA They're a great watch!
- bufordtwain 4y ago
  Around the 3:50 mark: "that's where the beer belly comes in handy" :)
- NegativeLatency 4y ago
  The steam engine stuff is great too
chrispeel 4y ago
I wonder if any early rock climbers used the sort of wood blocks to install pitons as Fred uses (most visible in Part 1). It seems like the wood blocks make the pitons a bit less destructive.
- theptip 4y ago
  I’ve never seen that. I don’t think it would work. In this case he is not protecting against a shock load, he is pretty much ensuring a constant force on the anchor by tying the ladder tightly and directly to the anchor. Climbing anchors need to withstand extreme loads as you could fall tens of feet before your fall is arrested and you load the anchor, plus the substrate is usually more strong than brick and mortar so you can make a much tighter (higher pressure) insertion before the wall crumbles.
danieldevries 4y ago
Fred was a national treasure. Really enjoyed his show when I was younger.
chrisseaton 4y ago
I wonder why the ladder isn't just built into the chimney permanently, like via ferrata.
- ectopod 4y ago
  What material wouldn't degrade over the lifetime of the chimney?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - chrisseaton 4y ago
    Steel... just like via ferrata. These chimneys aren't more than like 150 years old max.
    - ectopod 4y ago
      Maybe. I don't know. I've seen plenty of old fixed ladders that have rusted to uselessness, but they weren't 150 years old.
    - googlryas 4y ago
      Via ferratas are almost always embedded into pure rock, generally limestone, right? Brick and mortar is quite a bit different.
- VectorLock 4y ago
  There would then need to be ladders over most of the surface of the chimney, and with the anchors for the ladder mortared into the chimney, and the whole point of climbing the ladder in the first place is to repoint the mortar, you couldn't rely on the anchors being sound.
nimbius 4y ago
as a tradesman mechanic, seeing an old-timer like Fred at work makes me swoon. in the states due to OSHA regulations, there are quite a few reasons why this sort of work would never get done, but Freds attention to safety and detail cant be missed. Mr. Dibnah is a master craftsman. he makes scaling this chimney look like a sunday stroll.
- naikrovek 4y ago
  OSHA... I have never once seen, nor heard of anyone who has seen, someone who works for OSHA. I'm starting to think they aren't real... everyone is so sure that "OSHA won't like [that which is about to be attempted]" and it hasn't ever stopped anyone from doing profoundly stupid stuff, except for new guys. Still, I've never seen them, been alerted to their presence, or met anyone who has (I've been asking for 20+ years.) obviously they are real, but they are in no way the ever-present threat they are made out to be.
  - mc32 4y ago
    The problem is they will be present AFTER the accident for the investigation and then find out what shortcuts were taken and who was at fault/irresponsible.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      Exactly. Unless reported they are like NTSB and crawl out of the woodwork after someone dies.
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    OSHA has 2200 employees. They're not a large agency. That being said, they're like the SEC (which only has around 4800) in that they heavily rely on employees (and incidental bystanders) to report unsafe worksites. The fact that you haven't had to interact with them is either a really good or really bad thing.
  - notatoad 4y ago
    OHSA doesn't operate by inspection but by report. If your employees report your job site, you're gonna get busted. And if your employees are getting injured, they're gonna report your violations. Every person on your site is a OHSA inspector in disguise.
adav 4y ago
Lots of Fred’s fantastic TV shows can be easily found on YouTube. Is there a modern equivalent of those shows? Nothing comparable comes to mind.
- mhh__ 4y ago
  In a sense something like 3Blue1Brown or a good DIY channel is almost a modern equivalent in terms of content but the thing these old documentaries (not to be overly patriotic but often British ones) have that most (almost all, really) YouTube videos have is the expertise and creative bottleneck of being made by a proper TV studio. Bottleneck I say? From limitation and oversight comes restraint and clever tricks, and that is a good way of making good media.
- notatoad 4y ago
  There's a wonderful culture of tradesmen posting YouTube videos of their work. My most recent binge has been Perkins Builder Brothers, but also check out Essential Craftsman or Samson Boat Co. They lack some of the gravitas of the old guys, just because of their modern tone. But they're great.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Guilty of Treeson is good. There’s also a few plumbers unsticking drains (both sewer and storm) which is oddly fascinating.
    - notatoad 4y ago
      oh man, i went down the storm drain unplugging rabbit hole the other night. that was when i knew i had had too much youtube.
prescriptivist 4y ago
What is this particular regional accent? The narrator sounds like Tyson Fury.
- pacaro 4y ago
  Specifically Fred's accent is from Bolton, which is just NW of Manchester. It also encodes social class signifiers in that it is distinctly working class. It is also dated, accents have evolved a fair amount in the 50 years or so.
  - mhh__ 4y ago
    I suspect that post-internet and especially post-instagram and TikTok (it wasn't youtube), a lot of the UK's regional accents are going to get homogenised.
    - pacaro 4y ago
      It will be interesting to observe, I'm sure that TV and radio before it had a measurable impact too. I mean some people attribute the loss of the Cornish language to the railway making Cornwall less isolated
  - tragomaskhalos 4y ago
    Good spot. Paddy McGuinness is younger but his accent is very similar, particularly the very distinctive vowels which are quite different from Manchester's.
  - trebligdivad 4y ago
    Yes, they're very very local around here; with strong differences over a ~10 mile range around Bury, Bolton, Manchester.
- raldi 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancashire_dialect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancashire_dialect
leetrout 4y ago
This one is my favorite- where Fred ladders an overhang. https://youtu.be/3R3-YwDZrzg https://youtu.be/3R3-YwDZrzg
- I_complete_me 4y ago
  Thanks for the link. What percentage of the population nowadays would do that? And would every climber feel ok about doing it? Fred was great as witnessed by the comments!
  - leetrout 4y ago
    Of people that climb professionally I would think at least 10% would do that just like he did. 1 in 10 seems like the right ratio of expecting someone gutsy enough in that population. I bet most, if not all, would do it with modern safety gear. Out of the general population... not many people would go up that first ladder. Haha.
simple10 4y ago
Wow. That's amazingly mesmerizing and cathartic for free soloing. Thanks for posting. It's a stark contrast to the Magnus Midtbø and Alex Honnold free solo video [1] released today. The Magnus video made my palms literally drip with nervous perspiration. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cyya23MPoAI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cyya23MPoAI
- adriand 4y ago
  Couldn’t even watch this video - I had to skip to the end. Way too stressful! The frank admissions of fear at the outset really set the tone and it just gets more intense from there. Insane.
  - germinalphrase 4y ago
    and Honnold calls it light scrambling.
- geuis 4y ago
  That's a really interesting and somewhat tension-causing experience to watch. Tension level increased once they switched to the go-pro.
- djmips 4y ago
  That's so inspiring. Alex gives advice that might as well be about programming and the fear of starting a complex project. Don't look back or ahead, just this move is easy, this move is easy and you will get there!
  - vincnetas 4y ago
    this is good advice when situation is stable, but if you see storm is comimg, or there are other uncertanties, you must plan ahead or rush through. or have a backup plan, but yeah this is free soloing so no backup plan by design ;)
    - __s 4y ago
mhh__ 4y ago
If anyone likes this kind of vibe of old video my dad got me to "acquire" a show called "Jack Hargreave's Old Country" which is the titular man meandering across the English Countryside talking to people.
goldcd 4y ago
I'm somewhat bemused, but also quite proud that Fred Dibnah has appeared here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Dibnah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Dibnah I'm British but was completely unaware of the early stuff he appeared in, but the late 90s, early 2000s stuff crept into the public consciousness. Our equivalent of OSHA is "Health and Safety" and Fred held a dim view. Fortunately his legacy is continued by "British scaffolders" - a famous sub-group within construction, who you can still see to this day getting utterly shit-faced in a pub on cider over lunch, before returning to site. Not sure if this division of construction labour exists elsewhere. If you pay a builder to so anything in the UK, they'll subcontract any erection of scaffolding to separate company, with a noticeably more cavalier attitude towards potential death and injury. Then your primary contractor will do the job, and the scaffolders will return to remove the infrastructure.
- seszett 4y ago
  I assumed it was the same everywhere because it doesn't make sense for a company to keep all kind of scaffolding equipment when any given site will only need a small subset of it. Ah least in France and Belgium, scaffolding is also generally erected by a specialised company (except very large public construction companies which do everything themselves, but then it's still separate services inside the company).
  - jimnotgym 4y ago
    Scaffolding also requires certain licenses and insurance that are expensive to get in the UK, not worth it unless you are doing it full time. It is also an extraordinarily physically demanding job, which is not easy to do for someone who does not do it full time. If you look past the tatoos you will see scafolders often posess a very athletic physique, even sporting the neck and shoulder muscles that you normally only see on bodybuilders. Most general builders are happy to outsource such demanding work. It attracts a certain subset of the population, it is not particularly well paid, requires a qualification, is physically hard as stated, all weather. Therefore they don't descriminate against things that are taboo in many jobs, poor English, anger issues, heavy drinking, prison tattoos on hands and face, dyslexia, low IQ, missing employment history etc. You don't have to do a whiteboard interview, but you do have to be able to lift extraordinary weights. A standard scaffold pole is a 21ft long, heavy walled steel tube weighing around 30kg. Just you try and pick that up from one end like they do! You might manage to carry a 13ft (18kg) scaffold plank on your shoulder, but they carry them 5 or more at a time, and then lean them up against the scaffold! To be clear, Im not saying all scaffolders are dim ex cons. They are all extremely tough though... Btw Fred Dibnah of the video was in a very different industry of steeplejacking. This required brains and was rather better paid.
BFLpL0QNek 4y ago
A bygone era. I have fond memories of going to similar building sites/factories in north west England, 4-5 years old with my old man before I was old enough to go to school. Sitting on the wheel arch at the back of a rusty old van amongst loose tools/building materials bouncing around, being taken up some rickety scaffolding being told stay away from the edge, careful on the ladder, passing tools while my old man worked stood on stacked milk crates several floors up. Today that’d never happen and you’d be sat in front of a judge. 30-40+ years ago where certainly different times in working class nw England. Maybe it’s because I grew up in it but looking back, back then it seems work was work, not pushing Jira tickets, one on ones, 360 degrees, agile, navigating office politics just to get shit done. There’s a complete series about Fred on YouTube, well worth watching.
- seszett 4y ago
  > back then it seems work was work Back then, the amount of workers dying from work accidents was also an order of magnitude higher than it is today. Individual surviving workers might have good memories of their job, but I'm not sure if it was actually better from a more general point of view.
KennyBlanken 4y ago
I have a really dim view of people who hold a dim view of health and safety, especially around stuff like this. This sort of old-school machismo is encouraged by industry because doing things with a higher margin of safety is slower and more expensive. Often not by much, especially compared to the volume of money being made overall, which is what makes it even more reprehensible. Falls from heights are a huge cause of workplace deaths in construction: https://www.osha.gov/fall-protection https://www.osha.gov/fall-protection It doesn't take much height to do so: https://cdn1.hardhattraining.com/wp-content/uploads/how-high-is-deadly-002-600x392.webp https://cdn1.hardhattraining.com/wp-content/uploads/how-high... Any time an employer or company encourages you to take risks or pressures you to not observe safety regulations, find another job, fast. Your life is not less important than profits or productivity. Ever. Edit: not impressed at all. This guy is an asshole - aside from the fact that multiple clips show him picking something off chimneys or towers, giggling, and throwing them casually off - here he is laughing about how he and a coworker purposefully dumped a bucket of cement water off the top of a tower and came down to found they'd damaged a guy's nice sports car. Which he thinks his hilarious: https://youtu.be/ezX_o0H5FuE?t=217 https://youtu.be/ezX_o0H5FuE?t=217
- aynsof 4y ago
  I'd have expected the death rate to increase as the height increased. Any idea what's behind the seemingly random distribution?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - toast0 4y ago
    This isn't really reporting a death rate, it's reporting the distribution of heights given you died falling from a height. I'd guess falls from higher heights are more deadly, but less likely (you're more likely to use fall protection on a 8 story roof than a 1 story roof, I'd guess; and there's also a lot more 1 story roofs than 8 story roofs)
  - defen 4y ago
silentsea90 4y ago
Does anybody here feel a sense of sadness watching a video of a middle aged man from the mid 90s? I am closer to his age now than I am to myself in age from back then. Every time I watch an old movie (eg. The Godfather), I can't help but see myself in the younger folks then and realizing how old they are now. Makes me want to make the best of my time now. Do you folks feel that way?
- morsch 4y ago
  Sure. When I see a scene from Seinfeld now, I can't help but think that I'm now older than the protagonists, while they are stored in my memory as older people. It's less striking with videos like this, which I hadn't seen until a few years ago, when The Algorithm started pushing it.
tragomaskhalos 4y ago
I'm glad this stops before he has to negotiate the lip of the chimney as I was already getting the willies, having never fully recovered from watching John Noakes climbing Nelson's Column on Blue Peter all those years ago,
- mbalyuzi 4y ago
  Indeed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGZ-h70IK9s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGZ-h70IK9s . And the camera-man presumably did the same thing first, with camera in tow...
- Steve44 4y ago
  There is also the mast on the Royal Navy land based training base, HMS Ganges. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSuZXlUxwbk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSuZXlUxwbk
  - telesilla 4y ago
    Watching this was like watching some kind of horror film where society fore. Keep watching to the end where one of the alumni calmly explains how there was at least one death and serious injury! He did note that going up to the highest section was voluntary, at least..
  - tragomaskhalos 4y ago
    ladder runs out 15 feet from the top - oh thank God he's made it "All that's left is shunning up the mast" - sorry, what? I'm just going to hide behind this sofa
sizzzzlerz 4y ago
this puts all those guys who work on the giant antenna towers to shame, what with all their belts and harnesses and other safety equipment. Sometimes, they even have elevators to take them part of the way up.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Used to be wind turbine posts were just big enough for a ladder inside. Then they got big enough for a one-man elevator (that climbed the ladder). Its floor and ceiling popped open, just in case. Now the posts are big enough for a saloon car, which is good because it takes a whole crew, up top.
klelatti 4y ago
Some context might be of interest here. The chimneys that Dibnah worked to demolish were usually attached to cotton mills in and around Manchester in North West England. The cotton industry was in steep decline there in the 1970s and 1980s and one by one these mills became unprofitable and closed down. Even if the mill building could be repurposed the chimney wasn’t needed and would be expensive to maintain. I suspect Dibnah got the work because he was the cheapest and the mill owner would typically be very short of cash.
- ghostly_s 4y ago
  This video is about maintaining a chimney, not demolition.
  - klelatti 4y ago
    You’re right - which is great. General point still stands though as most chimneys were demolished.
Nooshu 4y ago
Whole host of his videos are on Youtube, many hours worth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnH7cw0ql1I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnH7cw0ql1I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v74p0djZ_zc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v74p0djZ_zc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g-bFr9qjDo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g-bFr9qjDo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T00zEt1-3VA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T00zEt1-3VA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=am9e2Gq1jt4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=am9e2Gq1jt4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPKvT52ZUi8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPKvT52ZUi8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2rE5YIyoc0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2rE5YIyoc0 *Other videos* - [Fred Dibnah laddering a chimney (Part 1)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F04dGK1_wYA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F04dGK1_wYA) - [Fred Dibnah laddering a chimney (Part 2)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-a27xwcLfU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-a27xwcLfU) - [Fred Dibnah How to climb a chimney overhang at 50+](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R3-YwDZrzg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R3-YwDZrzg) - [Fred Dibnah How to erect a chimney scaffold](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W_7uIapoHc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W_7uIapoHc) - [Fred Dibnah Tribute (2004)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nI4_OSS5F7k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nI4_OSS5F7k)
2ICofafireteam 4y ago
I used to have a video clip of Fred demolishing a chimney from the top-down one brick at a time for new labourers watch. It was the perfect example of not being intimidated by a big job: Just get at it and keep moving forward.

189 points by chha 4y ago

chha 4y ago

Came across this at random, and finds it a fascinating contrast to my (and probably lots of others on HN) daily job.

ls15 4y ago
It's like adding functionality to legacy code

CaliforniaKarl 4y ago

Part 1 is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F04dGK1_wYA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F04dGK1_wYA They're a great watch!

bufordtwain 4y ago
Around the 3:50 mark: "that's where the beer belly comes in handy" :)
NegativeLatency 4y ago
The steam engine stuff is great too

chrispeel 4y ago

I wonder if any early rock climbers used the sort of wood blocks to install pitons as Fred uses (most visible in Part 1). It seems like the wood blocks make the pitons a bit less destructive.

theptip 4y ago
I’ve never seen that. I don’t think it would work. In this case he is not protecting against a shock load, he is pretty much ensuring a constant force on the anchor by tying the ladder tightly and directly to the anchor. Climbing anchors need to withstand extreme loads as you could fall tens of feet before your fall is arrested and you load the anchor, plus the substrate is usually more strong than brick and mortar so you can make a much tighter (higher pressure) insertion before the wall crumbles.

danieldevries 4y ago

Fred was a national treasure. Really enjoyed his show when I was younger.

chrisseaton 4y ago

I wonder why the ladder isn't just built into the chimney permanently, like via ferrata.

ectopod 4y ago
What material wouldn't degrade over the lifetime of the chimney?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- chrisseaton 4y ago
  Steel... just like via ferrata. These chimneys aren't more than like 150 years old max.
  - ectopod 4y ago
    Maybe. I don't know. I've seen plenty of old fixed ladders that have rusted to uselessness, but they weren't 150 years old.
  - googlryas 4y ago
    Via ferratas are almost always embedded into pure rock, generally limestone, right? Brick and mortar is quite a bit different.
VectorLock 4y ago
There would then need to be ladders over most of the surface of the chimney, and with the anchors for the ladder mortared into the chimney, and the whole point of climbing the ladder in the first place is to repoint the mortar, you couldn't rely on the anchors being sound.

nimbius 4y ago

as a tradesman mechanic, seeing an old-timer like Fred at work makes me swoon. in the states due to OSHA regulations, there are quite a few reasons why this sort of work would never get done, but Freds attention to safety and detail cant be missed. Mr. Dibnah is a master craftsman. he makes scaling this chimney look like a sunday stroll.

naikrovek 4y ago
OSHA... I have never once seen, nor heard of anyone who has seen, someone who works for OSHA. I'm starting to think they aren't real... everyone is so sure that "OSHA won't like [that which is about to be attempted]" and it hasn't ever stopped anyone from doing profoundly stupid stuff, except for new guys. Still, I've never seen them, been alerted to their presence, or met anyone who has (I've been asking for 20+ years.) obviously they are real, but they are in no way the ever-present threat they are made out to be.
- mc32 4y ago
  The problem is they will be present AFTER the accident for the investigation and then find out what shortcuts were taken and who was at fault/irresponsible.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Exactly. Unless reported they are like NTSB and crawl out of the woodwork after someone dies.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  OSHA has 2200 employees. They're not a large agency. That being said, they're like the SEC (which only has around 4800) in that they heavily rely on employees (and incidental bystanders) to report unsafe worksites. The fact that you haven't had to interact with them is either a really good or really bad thing.
- notatoad 4y ago
  OHSA doesn't operate by inspection but by report. If your employees report your job site, you're gonna get busted. And if your employees are getting injured, they're gonna report your violations. Every person on your site is a OHSA inspector in disguise.

adav 4y ago

Lots of Fred’s fantastic TV shows can be easily found on YouTube. Is there a modern equivalent of those shows? Nothing comparable comes to mind.

mhh__ 4y ago
In a sense something like 3Blue1Brown or a good DIY channel is almost a modern equivalent in terms of content but the thing these old documentaries (not to be overly patriotic but often British ones) have that most (almost all, really) YouTube videos have is the expertise and creative bottleneck of being made by a proper TV studio. Bottleneck I say? From limitation and oversight comes restraint and clever tricks, and that is a good way of making good media.
notatoad 4y ago
There's a wonderful culture of tradesmen posting YouTube videos of their work. My most recent binge has been Perkins Builder Brothers, but also check out Essential Craftsman or Samson Boat Co. They lack some of the gravitas of the old guys, just because of their modern tone. But they're great.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Guilty of Treeson is good. There’s also a few plumbers unsticking drains (both sewer and storm) which is oddly fascinating.
  - notatoad 4y ago
    oh man, i went down the storm drain unplugging rabbit hole the other night. that was when i knew i had had too much youtube.

prescriptivist 4y ago

What is this particular regional accent? The narrator sounds like Tyson Fury.

pacaro 4y ago
Specifically Fred's accent is from Bolton, which is just NW of Manchester. It also encodes social class signifiers in that it is distinctly working class. It is also dated, accents have evolved a fair amount in the 50 years or so.
- mhh__ 4y ago
  I suspect that post-internet and especially post-instagram and TikTok (it wasn't youtube), a lot of the UK's regional accents are going to get homogenised.
  - pacaro 4y ago
    It will be interesting to observe, I'm sure that TV and radio before it had a measurable impact too. I mean some people attribute the loss of the Cornish language to the railway making Cornwall less isolated
- tragomaskhalos 4y ago
  Good spot. Paddy McGuinness is younger but his accent is very similar, particularly the very distinctive vowels which are quite different from Manchester's.
- trebligdivad 4y ago
  Yes, they're very very local around here; with strong differences over a ~10 mile range around Bury, Bolton, Manchester.
raldi 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancashire_dialect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancashire_dialect

leetrout 4y ago

This one is my favorite- where Fred ladders an overhang. https://youtu.be/3R3-YwDZrzg https://youtu.be/3R3-YwDZrzg

I_complete_me 4y ago
Thanks for the link. What percentage of the population nowadays would do that? And would every climber feel ok about doing it? Fred was great as witnessed by the comments!
- leetrout 4y ago
  Of people that climb professionally I would think at least 10% would do that just like he did. 1 in 10 seems like the right ratio of expecting someone gutsy enough in that population. I bet most, if not all, would do it with modern safety gear. Out of the general population... not many people would go up that first ladder. Haha.

simple10 4y ago

Wow. That's amazingly mesmerizing and cathartic for free soloing. Thanks for posting. It's a stark contrast to the Magnus Midtbø and Alex Honnold free solo video [1] released today. The Magnus video made my palms literally drip with nervous perspiration. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cyya23MPoAI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cyya23MPoAI

adriand 4y ago
Couldn’t even watch this video - I had to skip to the end. Way too stressful! The frank admissions of fear at the outset really set the tone and it just gets more intense from there. Insane.
- germinalphrase 4y ago
  and Honnold calls it light scrambling.
geuis 4y ago
That's a really interesting and somewhat tension-causing experience to watch. Tension level increased once they switched to the go-pro.
djmips 4y ago
That's so inspiring. Alex gives advice that might as well be about programming and the fear of starting a complex project. Don't look back or ahead, just this move is easy, this move is easy and you will get there!
- vincnetas 4y ago
  this is good advice when situation is stable, but if you see storm is comimg, or there are other uncertanties, you must plan ahead or rush through. or have a backup plan, but yeah this is free soloing so no backup plan by design ;)
  - __s 4y ago

mhh__ 4y ago

If anyone likes this kind of vibe of old video my dad got me to "acquire" a show called "Jack Hargreave's Old Country" which is the titular man meandering across the English Countryside talking to people.

goldcd 4y ago

I'm somewhat bemused, but also quite proud that Fred Dibnah has appeared here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Dibnah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Dibnah I'm British but was completely unaware of the early stuff he appeared in, but the late 90s, early 2000s stuff crept into the public consciousness. Our equivalent of OSHA is "Health and Safety" and Fred held a dim view. Fortunately his legacy is continued by "British scaffolders" - a famous sub-group within construction, who you can still see to this day getting utterly shit-faced in a pub on cider over lunch, before returning to site. Not sure if this division of construction labour exists elsewhere. If you pay a builder to so anything in the UK, they'll subcontract any erection of scaffolding to separate company, with a noticeably more cavalier attitude towards potential death and injury. Then your primary contractor will do the job, and the scaffolders will return to remove the infrastructure.

seszett 4y ago
I assumed it was the same everywhere because it doesn't make sense for a company to keep all kind of scaffolding equipment when any given site will only need a small subset of it. Ah least in France and Belgium, scaffolding is also generally erected by a specialised company (except very large public construction companies which do everything themselves, but then it's still separate services inside the company).
- jimnotgym 4y ago
  Scaffolding also requires certain licenses and insurance that are expensive to get in the UK, not worth it unless you are doing it full time. It is also an extraordinarily physically demanding job, which is not easy to do for someone who does not do it full time. If you look past the tatoos you will see scafolders often posess a very athletic physique, even sporting the neck and shoulder muscles that you normally only see on bodybuilders. Most general builders are happy to outsource such demanding work. It attracts a certain subset of the population, it is not particularly well paid, requires a qualification, is physically hard as stated, all weather. Therefore they don't descriminate against things that are taboo in many jobs, poor English, anger issues, heavy drinking, prison tattoos on hands and face, dyslexia, low IQ, missing employment history etc. You don't have to do a whiteboard interview, but you do have to be able to lift extraordinary weights. A standard scaffold pole is a 21ft long, heavy walled steel tube weighing around 30kg. Just you try and pick that up from one end like they do! You might manage to carry a 13ft (18kg) scaffold plank on your shoulder, but they carry them 5 or more at a time, and then lean them up against the scaffold! To be clear, Im not saying all scaffolders are dim ex cons. They are all extremely tough though... Btw Fred Dibnah of the video was in a very different industry of steeplejacking. This required brains and was rather better paid.

BFLpL0QNek 4y ago

A bygone era. I have fond memories of going to similar building sites/factories in north west England, 4-5 years old with my old man before I was old enough to go to school. Sitting on the wheel arch at the back of a rusty old van amongst loose tools/building materials bouncing around, being taken up some rickety scaffolding being told stay away from the edge, careful on the ladder, passing tools while my old man worked stood on stacked milk crates several floors up. Today that’d never happen and you’d be sat in front of a judge. 30-40+ years ago where certainly different times in working class nw England. Maybe it’s because I grew up in it but looking back, back then it seems work was work, not pushing Jira tickets, one on ones, 360 degrees, agile, navigating office politics just to get shit done. There’s a complete series about Fred on YouTube, well worth watching.

seszett 4y ago
> back then it seems work was work Back then, the amount of workers dying from work accidents was also an order of magnitude higher than it is today. Individual surviving workers might have good memories of their job, but I'm not sure if it was actually better from a more general point of view.

KennyBlanken 4y ago

I have a really dim view of people who hold a dim view of health and safety, especially around stuff like this. This sort of old-school machismo is encouraged by industry because doing things with a higher margin of safety is slower and more expensive. Often not by much, especially compared to the volume of money being made overall, which is what makes it even more reprehensible. Falls from heights are a huge cause of workplace deaths in construction: https://www.osha.gov/fall-protection https://www.osha.gov/fall-protection It doesn't take much height to do so: https://cdn1.hardhattraining.com/wp-content/uploads/how-high-is-deadly-002-600x392.webp https://cdn1.hardhattraining.com/wp-content/uploads/how-high... Any time an employer or company encourages you to take risks or pressures you to not observe safety regulations, find another job, fast. Your life is not less important than profits or productivity. Ever. Edit: not impressed at all. This guy is an asshole - aside from the fact that multiple clips show him picking something off chimneys or towers, giggling, and throwing them casually off - here he is laughing about how he and a coworker purposefully dumped a bucket of cement water off the top of a tower and came down to found they'd damaged a guy's nice sports car. Which he thinks his hilarious: https://youtu.be/ezX_o0H5FuE?t=217 https://youtu.be/ezX_o0H5FuE?t=217

aynsof 4y ago
I'd have expected the death rate to increase as the height increased. Any idea what's behind the seemingly random distribution?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- toast0 4y ago
  This isn't really reporting a death rate, it's reporting the distribution of heights given you died falling from a height. I'd guess falls from higher heights are more deadly, but less likely (you're more likely to use fall protection on a 8 story roof than a 1 story roof, I'd guess; and there's also a lot more 1 story roofs than 8 story roofs)
- defen 4y ago

silentsea90 4y ago

Does anybody here feel a sense of sadness watching a video of a middle aged man from the mid 90s? I am closer to his age now than I am to myself in age from back then. Every time I watch an old movie (eg. The Godfather), I can't help but see myself in the younger folks then and realizing how old they are now. Makes me want to make the best of my time now. Do you folks feel that way?

morsch 4y ago
Sure. When I see a scene from Seinfeld now, I can't help but think that I'm now older than the protagonists, while they are stored in my memory as older people. It's less striking with videos like this, which I hadn't seen until a few years ago, when The Algorithm started pushing it.

tragomaskhalos 4y ago

I'm glad this stops before he has to negotiate the lip of the chimney as I was already getting the willies, having never fully recovered from watching John Noakes climbing Nelson's Column on Blue Peter all those years ago,

mbalyuzi 4y ago
Indeed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGZ-h70IK9s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGZ-h70IK9s . And the camera-man presumably did the same thing first, with camera in tow...
Steve44 4y ago
There is also the mast on the Royal Navy land based training base, HMS Ganges. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSuZXlUxwbk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSuZXlUxwbk
- telesilla 4y ago
  Watching this was like watching some kind of horror film where society fore. Keep watching to the end where one of the alumni calmly explains how there was at least one death and serious injury! He did note that going up to the highest section was voluntary, at least..
- tragomaskhalos 4y ago
  ladder runs out 15 feet from the top - oh thank God he's made it "All that's left is shunning up the mast" - sorry, what? I'm just going to hide behind this sofa

sizzzzlerz 4y ago

this puts all those guys who work on the giant antenna towers to shame, what with all their belts and harnesses and other safety equipment. Sometimes, they even have elevators to take them part of the way up.

ncmncm 4y ago
Used to be wind turbine posts were just big enough for a ladder inside. Then they got big enough for a one-man elevator (that climbed the ladder). Its floor and ceiling popped open, just in case. Now the posts are big enough for a saloon car, which is good because it takes a whole crew, up top.

klelatti 4y ago

Some context might be of interest here. The chimneys that Dibnah worked to demolish were usually attached to cotton mills in and around Manchester in North West England. The cotton industry was in steep decline there in the 1970s and 1980s and one by one these mills became unprofitable and closed down. Even if the mill building could be repurposed the chimney wasn’t needed and would be expensive to maintain. I suspect Dibnah got the work because he was the cheapest and the mill owner would typically be very short of cash.

ghostly_s 4y ago
This video is about maintaining a chimney, not demolition.
- klelatti 4y ago
  You’re right - which is great. General point still stands though as most chimneys were demolished.

Nooshu 4y ago

Whole host of his videos are on Youtube, many hours worth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnH7cw0ql1I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnH7cw0ql1I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v74p0djZ_zc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v74p0djZ_zc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g-bFr9qjDo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g-bFr9qjDo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T00zEt1-3VA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T00zEt1-3VA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=am9e2Gq1jt4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=am9e2Gq1jt4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPKvT52ZUi8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPKvT52ZUi8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2rE5YIyoc0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2rE5YIyoc0 *Other videos* - [Fred Dibnah laddering a chimney (Part 1)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F04dGK1_wYA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F04dGK1_wYA) - [Fred Dibnah laddering a chimney (Part 2)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-a27xwcLfU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-a27xwcLfU) - [Fred Dibnah How to climb a chimney overhang at 50+](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R3-YwDZrzg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R3-YwDZrzg) - [Fred Dibnah How to erect a chimney scaffold](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W_7uIapoHc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W_7uIapoHc) - [Fred Dibnah Tribute (2004)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nI4_OSS5F7k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nI4_OSS5F7k)

2ICofafireteam 4y ago

I used to have a video clip of Fred demolishing a chimney from the top-down one brick at a time for new labourers watch. It was the perfect example of not being intimidated by a big job: Just get at it and keep moving forward.