Changing the face of Charleston : The unbuilding of the Grace and Pearman Bridges
Frank's Internet Home Page
Blog: 2005
Archives of unbuilding sections
Blog: 2006
The story of building the Ravenel Bridge
Visit our
Adventures in Singapore
Click to view all web page segments
I enjoy hearing from you. If you have comments and suggestions, write me.


Unbuilding Highlights
(Apr 10)
Meeting St. Stories
(Jul 10 2006)
East Bay Stories
(Oct 10 2006)
Drum Island Stories
(Feb 17)
Pearman Bridge Stories
(Apr 3)
Grace Bridge Stories
(Apr 3)
Imposions: Prep and boom
(Mar 27)
Unbuilding Bridge Blog
(July 23 2006)
Unbuilding Challenges
(Mar 13)
Learning Links
(Feb 20)
Unbuilding Stories
(Mar 13)
Video and Sounds
(Feb 28)

October 16, 2005:
Recovering and Disassembling a Pearman Segment (Chewing)

I missed the dropping of the Pearman truss and found the recovery process more to my speed of adaptation. To capture some of the dynamics, I made a composite video from photos demonstrating the overall retrieval process (12 Mb mpeg video). Shown here is an overview as seen from the Sea Breeze Marina - where you can see both Pearman supports and the gap where the truss used to live.

the east cantilevered segment

and the west cantilevered segment

What remains is mostly scrap pieces - shears doing their thing

These next photos show raising one of the last segments (barely visible here)

Using the shear to assist the lifting process

and raising

raising

raising

lowering

and resting on the barge

Now the shear takes over and startes removing segments - start

and finish

Then on my side (west) - start

and finish

then laying the skeleton down into the eating position

where the shear chews away

and chews until the plate is clean

Click to view all unbuilding web page segments

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Attribution: C. Frank Starmer and Sparky Witte from http://oldcooperriverbridge.org