This guy is a legend among Iron workers,John Rukavina . I know him through his nephew. The guy is in his 70's and still hanging iron. One tough SOB. Takes me back to my American Bridge days in the 70's. Never been this high though. 300' was my tops. <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/TSoJf2nOmpU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Watch this vid of him in 2012 http://www.cowboysofthesky.com/news.htm
When I was in college, I got a job working construction. I wasn't an iron worker but I was one story below where they were working on the sixth floor. One day the civil engineer came to look at the job. He got off the elevator and instead of standing up he got down on his bottom and scooted along the iron beam on his ass while holding on with both hands. I didn't laugh because I needed the 90 cents per hour.
When I was young I worked on a house framing crew. Learning to walk the plate line, the 3 1/2" wide 2x4, and over coming my fear of heights was one of the hardest things I've had to do. The other guys on the crew did chuckle but they weren't too hard on me.
Those guys have iron balls that's for sure. I erected and later dissembled a 76' ham radio tower back in the 80's, and that was too high for me.
Scary stuff. When I was a kid me and another guy "climbed up" a 300' radio tower. We got scared and climbed down after a while. It seemed like we must have gotten near the top, but when we looked from the ground we probably only made it 75'!
Wow that must be cool to be up there. You really canât make any mistakes or miss a step. But I think the view from one of those places would be incredible and to forever walk by the building and remember you set the flag on it would be cool.
It's a whole lot safer now. I can remember working with no fall protection at all. Climbing scaffolding several stories up, going out on trapeze scaffolding just hanging out. Climbing over the edge from one deck to the other and shimmy down to the next. Strange thing though. Most of the falls people had were of less than 30 feet. Guess it was a tendency to get really reckless the lower you went. I was on the roof of my house last summer, a lousy 2 stories and my knees were knocking getting down. It's a bitch getting old and pussified.
The guy who started ABC Roofing Supply Co., the largest roofing supply co in America, was on his roof with a contractor and fell and died. The guy was a billionaire and still climbing a roof, no matter how much experience you have there is always a danger.
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