Rogues Gallery

This is a minor classic. The bloke has tried. He’s carefully put washers on the U bolts and he’s taped the cable to mast really thoroughly. The problem is, he’s a learner, and he just can’t fit a chimney lashing kit. It’s one of those things that you have to be shown, I think. It’s a bit of a knack, but it’s much easier to acquire the knack if someone shows you the basic technique. This chap has hit a common problem for learners: he’s run out of J bolt thread! What happens is that he didn’t take all the slack out before he started spannering. So he laboriously tightened and tightened until the thread ended, and still the damned thing wasn’t tight! One trick is to loop one end of the lashing wire over the J bolt temporarily and hold it in place with one hand whilst pressing downwards heavily on the wire at the midpoint along that face of the chimney. This pulls all the slack round the chimney and the temporary J bolt fixing can be made permanent, after all the slack has been taken out of the wire. This will often remove six inches of slack, far more than the J bolts can take up, considering that they have to take up the stretch in the wire as well. Another trick is to use the bracket as a lever to pull the slack wire round to the bracket corner.

This chap has compounded his error by not seating the bracket on the corner of the stack properly. I can see why. He’s tightened the right-hand bolt too much and the left-hand one not enough. Maybe that just happened by accident because he ran out of J bolt thread. Luckily a spider’s web has appeared. Since as we all know spider’s webs are made of high tensile stuff maybe the web will be enough to prevent the complete collapse of the aerial.

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