Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 April 1895 — THE TALLEST LADDER. [ARTICLE]

THE TALLEST LADDER.

Spiked Against a Smokestack and Reaches 456 Feet. A short distance from Glasgow Cathedral, northward through Castle street, the Monkland canal is crossed and the grimiest of manufacturing regions is reached. On the left hand are the well-known St. Rollox works, of which Sir Charles Tennant is the head, and which are easily distinguished by the great chimney stack designed by the late Professor Macquorn Rankine. The stack is 456 feet high from the base to the capstone—32 feet less than the Townsend stack in the same locality, but Tennant’s stack stands on a more elevated part of the city and so to the onlooker appears taller than its neighbor. Some interesting operations were recently carried out in connection with the repairing of Tennant’s stack. A local steeplejack of note, who has kept the two chimneys in repair for the past twenty-five years mounted to the top of the stack, adopting a different method from that used by him about two years ago, when he climbed the stack at Port Dundas. On that occasion he mounted by means of kite-flying, which enabled the necessary ropes for the ascent being thrown over the top of the chimney. On the present occasion he adopted a handier, and, on the whole, a safer plan. This is known as the ladder process, and is much in vogue among contractors for chimney repairing. The occasion was the first time the method has been used for a chimney of so great a height, and when fully erected the ladder was the highest in the world. The first section was planted against the chimney and nailed securely by hooked iron pins eighteen inches long and an inch thick. Section after section each eighteen feet long was then hoisted up, and after being lashed together, was fastened in the same manner to the chimney—the difficult work, as will be readily understood, requiring great care and attention. The ladders used were of yellow pine, and of the lightest possible make, with flat steps an inch by an inch and a half broad. One advantage of this process is that the work of repairing does not, as in the case of a kite, require to wait for a favorable wind, but can be begun at any time, and the preliminary operations thus over, it is simply a matter of climbing a ladder.—[Westminster Gazette-