MAPLE CREEK, Sask. – When Ken and Jason Sawby were building their shop at Skyline Farms near Maple Creek, they wanted to be able to handle any job that came their way.
They felt floor anchors would come in handy for bending or straightening iron, so they set up three before the shop floor concrete was poured.
“We have three great big deadmen sunk in the floor with holes full of concrete,” Ken said.
“There’s three of them going crosswise across the floor, about 25 feet from the big door. The holes were seven or eight feet deep and a couple of feet across. (The anchor) has a discer blade welded onto a 2 7/8 drill stem. I welded some rebar crosses at the top, maybe four inches below the surface so they’re anchored into the cement.”
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Sawby welded two large nuts into the top of the drill stem, including plug welding them from the side to make sure they wouldn’t let go. The two nuts give him more than two inches of thread to work with. The top nut is level with the floor.
“That’s where we can screw a 1 1/4 inch bolt with a ring on it to straighten frames, buckets or anything that needs an anchor.”
Sawby said he uses a variety of floor anchors, depending on the situation. Some are simply a bolt with a ring welded to the top.
“We also have a bolt that goes in, with a nut welded on the head so you can screw something else into it if you want to. And if we don’t have the right thing, we just make one. You can screw in whatever kind of anchor you want,” he said.
“They’re there to help straighten things you can’t get in a press, if it’s too big or too tough. I’ve had a 50-ton jack underneath and you can keep jacking until the jack doesn’t go anymore.”
Sawby uses the anchors to fix his equipment or help out when a neighbour has a job too big for his own shop.
“We had a blade off a four-wheel drive loader from a guy that was digging rocks. He got a little rammy, busted the brace in the bucket and bowed the front of it down,” Sawby said.
“We anchored it on each side with a 50 ton jack in the middle and started jacking until we had it straight. Then we held it straight and heated it a bit to take the stress out, hooked the brace back in the middle, welded it on and away he went.”
The anchors can be used to straighten truck frames and push centres out of hard to handle items.
“One time we had a big wheel off one of these compressor engines. They couldn’t get the centre out; they couldn’t get it in a press because it was too big. So we anchored it to the floor, put jacks under there, put a little heat on it and boom, she broke loose,” Sawby said.
He puts a plastic plug in the holes when he doesn’t have the anchors installed so they don’t rust in. If the holes fill up with debris, he cleans it with a shop vac hose.
“We don’t use them a lot, but when we do use them, nothing else would work.”
