Now when I were a boy,

[Ocean1]

I like the riveting pic. Looks like the guy on the right is balancing by placing his left leg on board that his mate on the left is standing on.

They're actually supposed to both be on the same rivet with them new fangled pneumatic riveters. The noise would be incredible, and no ear protection.

Makes you think not just about changing attitudes to safety. Before the Empire State building the holes for those rivets would have been drilled by hand (as in brace & bit). The difference between then and now in pure labour hours on projects like that is huge. The fact that there's an order of magnitude less hours spent in construction is one of many wee facts OSH fail to mention when compiling statistics to justify policy and budgets.

[pete376403]

They're actually supposed to both be on the same rivet with them new fangled pneumatic riveters. The noise would be incredible, and no ear protection.

Makes you think not just about changing attitudes to safety. Before the Empire State building the holes for those rivets would have been drilled by hand (as in brace & bit). The difference between then and now in pure labour hours on projects like that is huge. The fact that there's an order of magnitude less hours spent in construction is one of many wee facts OSH fail to mention when compiling statistics to justify policy and budgets.

No way to brace and bit drilling steel beams. Even way back then the beams would have the hole formed by a powered punch press. Have a look at an old steel brdige or boiler sometime - the number of rivets is very large and the holes are big - 1" diameter or more. Even if the labour cost was free they couldn't afford the time to bore the holes by hand. Check the number of rivets in the attached pic - just a tiny section of a steel frame building (Empire State) The only way they could have formed enough rivet holes to assemblr a 102 storey building in 14 months would have been to use machinery, and a lot of it