- Location
- Retired in Minneapolis
This fellow posted his project on a woodworking forum that I follow, here's what he wrote, the video link is at the bottom:
So in my professional life, I work as the Environmental Health and Safety Manager for a chemical company. I have recently been updating all of our safety training and am trying to move to a more hands-on approach. This week we are doing some training on fall arrest equipment and I needed a place to hang people. The problem is that all of our ceilings are 20' or higher, so in order to hand people indoors I would need an anchor point rated for 5000lbs. I needed a different solution, so yesterday, I had an idea. Fall protection is only required when the worker is over 4' off the ground, so if I made something that would keep people under that height, I would not require a rated anchor point. So I went out to our warehouse and found an old pile of 11 foot wooden beams and had an idea....I would make a full size, fully functional gallows! As long as the platform is less than four feet off the ground, it's legal. I spent all day yesterday making this, and today I had the opportunity to be the first person to test it out. The video posted below is the second hanging. As far as design, its a basic A frame, I cut half laps for the joinery and the whole thing is screwed together (it only has to last until I can weld up a steel version). The platform is a torsion box, with a 1/2" sch 40 pipe running through all the joists and into the frame to make a hinge along the back of the platform. The front of the platform is supported by two 2x4's notched and angled so that they can only come out one way. Then I drilled through both the 2x4's and the A frame and put a lag bolt through it as a safety so the platform cannot fall accidentally. Once the safeties are removed, a quick jerk of a rope connecting the 2x4's drops the platform. In short I got to fulfill two life dreams: First, I got paid to spend an entire day woodworking, and second, I got to build a full size gallows (What? You've never dreamed of making a gallows?)
Trap door!
So in my professional life, I work as the Environmental Health and Safety Manager for a chemical company. I have recently been updating all of our safety training and am trying to move to a more hands-on approach. This week we are doing some training on fall arrest equipment and I needed a place to hang people. The problem is that all of our ceilings are 20' or higher, so in order to hand people indoors I would need an anchor point rated for 5000lbs. I needed a different solution, so yesterday, I had an idea. Fall protection is only required when the worker is over 4' off the ground, so if I made something that would keep people under that height, I would not require a rated anchor point. So I went out to our warehouse and found an old pile of 11 foot wooden beams and had an idea....I would make a full size, fully functional gallows! As long as the platform is less than four feet off the ground, it's legal. I spent all day yesterday making this, and today I had the opportunity to be the first person to test it out. The video posted below is the second hanging. As far as design, its a basic A frame, I cut half laps for the joinery and the whole thing is screwed together (it only has to last until I can weld up a steel version). The platform is a torsion box, with a 1/2" sch 40 pipe running through all the joists and into the frame to make a hinge along the back of the platform. The front of the platform is supported by two 2x4's notched and angled so that they can only come out one way. Then I drilled through both the 2x4's and the A frame and put a lag bolt through it as a safety so the platform cannot fall accidentally. Once the safeties are removed, a quick jerk of a rope connecting the 2x4's drops the platform. In short I got to fulfill two life dreams: First, I got paid to spend an entire day woodworking, and second, I got to build a full size gallows (What? You've never dreamed of making a gallows?)
Trap door!
