Concrete counterweights?

Does anyone have any ideas about what these precast concrete items were used for? There has ben a suggestion that they could have been counterweights for a tower crane or possibly for an excavator

Likely a self erector tower crane, one that slews at the bottom instead of the top. Good luck finding out what it fits. A lot of the older ones were italian built.

There's probably some guy with a bunch of lattice sections setting in the weeds going "I think this is some kind of tower crane, but there's no counterweights"....

crane operator said:

Likely a self erector tower crane, one that slews at the bottom instead of the top. Good luck finding out what it fits. A lot of the older ones were italian built.

There's probably some guy with a bunch of lattice sections setting in the weeds going "I think this is some kind of tower crane, but there's no counterweights"....

Click to expand...

I've wanted a small tower crane for a while. Absolutely no use for it, or license to operate, but would be so damn cool to have

Those definitely look like crane counterweights to me though. I wonder what happened to the crane they belonged to...

Probably scrapped the crane, you can't scrap concrete

Actually concrete is crushed and reused all the time. A lot of people prefer it over gravel.

Yeah, you can crush it, and a C & D landfill here takes clean concrete for free, but if you take it to the scrapyard mixed in with the scrapped crane, they will cuss you....

If I recall correctly the Lampson Cranes had many tons of concrete counterweights stacked on them in some setups. You can see them tumble on the fatal wreck footage as Big Blue went down at MIller Park is Milwaukee. Concrete counterweights are fairly common on the smaller, portable, self erecting tower cranes that have the climbing cabs also.

Most of your excavator counterweights are filled with concrete.

Speaking of excavator counterweights, .....,
When the Cat 315 first came out, it was a little in the ass. Especially with a larger bucket. Halton would cut a hole at the top of the counterweight, dig out a hole in the mortar mix and pour in lead. Weld the top back on and fix the paint.

I would use a needle scaler to dig a hole. There was a lot of metal fillings and other small pieces of steel mixed in with it. The trick was to leave a couple inches of mortar along the rear to insulate the paint and CAT decal from the molten lead.

Molten lead. Just imagine the OSHA nightmare of having an employee do that, nowadays.