G-dog at work
Yes, I work...Although considering all the time I spend on hive one could easily assume hive is all I do. That's not the case though, as I have a day job which I am currently doing from home, and do other things too. I was working pretty hard today as it turns out, but not at my day job, or hive...I was at the gun range y'all!
That's me there below on the left...Supervising (i.e. taking a selfie whilst the other buggers work. Suckers!) A few of us had gathered to get a few jobs done before the range reopens after the flu-shutdown and I'll be honest, I'm sore as hell right now...Too much chain sawing I think.
We were there to complete a concrete wall we began constructing a little while ago.
Clearly gun ranges need to meet safety regulations which is what the walls are all about. We wanted to extend a range out a little further which meant blocking off a walkway (which is where you see the truck below parked) so that the range could be used whilst people still walked up to the next one, our village complex.
Chainsaw massacre
Today we had to place eight blocks which weigh about 1.5 tonnes each. We first had to murder a tree though, as it was hanging over and whilst not a problem now, would be in the next year or two so down it came. I didn't do the actual murdering although once it was down I chainsawed most of it into firewood...And scored a nice little pile of it for myself too! If you have never chainsawed anything you really should - It's so pleasing.
We had a crane truck delivering the concrete blocks so had to work quickly to fell, and cut up, the tree and whilst me and the young fellow in the orange chainsaw-chaps worked with the saws the other three blokes prepared the spot for the concrete blocks, dragged away the small branches and piled the firewood for collection later. It all moved like a nicely-oiled machine and the five of us was the perfect number to be doing the job. Too many and someone might have gotten in the way, and lost an arm or leg.
Do you even lift bro
The truck was supposed to come at 1pm, but as usually happens he was early. We had to quickly get going with the tree, more just the removal of it all so the truck could back in, and before long we were ready to lift.
The concrete blocks we get are made out of excess concrete that worksites don't use. They come back in the cement mixer trucks and get made into these blocks and sold off at $40 a block. We know the guy so only pay $22 though which is nice considering how many we use. The transport is the biggest expense at about $1200 for the long wall you see in these images which we did a few weeks ago. There's nothing for it though; It has to be done and the gun range, a military-run range, is well funded.
We had a small issue with the truck as the operator could not really get his out-riggers set out far enough because of the exisiting wall but we made do and the lifting began.
Each concrete block is made with a hole through it and with a steel tube stuck through a sling is used on each side to lift the block. Above you can see the operator setting the rigging and the first lift; Below you'll see the blocks being set into place on the dolomite gravel bed we made earlier.
Quite clearly you can pick the professional...The one wearing the hard hat...The others are blokes from the club and are using 1970' personal protection equipment - Their heads.
The wall came together quite quickly from this point with just a little positioning required. You can probably tell I'm doing a great job here, supervising right?
I added this image below or perspective, so you could sort of work out how big the blocks are and how high the wall actually is. It also shows part of the mountainous pile of branches off the tree that fellow sitting on the wall murdered.
The wall is designed to catch any stray bullet, mainly from accidental discharge (AD), that may occur throughout the course of fire. (It happens occasionally). As I said earlier, because we wanted to extend the range to the right of the wall in this image we needed to erect the walls to protect people in the village complex potentially getting shot because...That would not be a good thing.
I was at the club for about six hours all up today and have come home rather sore around the back, shoulders, arms, legs...Well, most places really. 😜
We got the job done though and it will work really well once we start shooting again.
We've been in the process of creating a few new ranges over the last few months and I added a couple below to show you as an example.
These two are side by side on the access road, which is where I'm standing to take the shots. You should be able to make out the mesh walls in the first shot below. They are classed as solid walls which cannot be shot through. There are small openings here and there, doors essentially, and the shooter must move about very quickly to shoot whatever targets have been set up. It's called IPSC shooting. The blue barrels are full of mulched up car tyres to catch the bullets.
Here's another one. This one has windows and some mesh walls as well as the solid ones. Windows are called apertures to be honest, we're not supposed to call them windows which is dumb.
Anyway, these two ranges are small, designed for very quick shooting stages. The top one here we'll probably have 14 -15 targets set up and with each requiring a double-tap (two hits) that's 30 rounds...It will take somewhere in the vicinity of 12-17 seconds to complete start to finish for an accomplished shooter depending on the various courses we set out. It's hectic.
So, that's my day y'all. I was supposed to be working at home, my day job, but I did a little of that on the phone in between chainsawing and supervising so that'll keep the boss happy huh?
I hope your run into the weekend is going ok. It's Thursday afternoon here, around 5pm so only a day to go and it's the weekend!
Have a great day y'all...I have to get Faith give me a massage. 😇