Finished a nasty project, tearing off the roof of an old car wash. Sawzall blades, total of 35 this weekend. That sucked. Crew was awesome, and it was a very physical couple of days.

Didn't run into any more of those washer welds, which is great because they sucked slimey donkey dongs. These gives you an idea of how we got it done.




We tried grinding, cut-off wheels, roto hammers, fancy saw blades. Once we got the method figured out, sawzall, flat bar, and a hammer was the ticket. foam plugs PLUS muffs today. Add in the generator running all day, and it was pretty damned loud.

Here are a few before/early stages....




......and a few as we made some progress.






Sorry for the noise Hoquiam.

How many tons of scrap metal you figure?

1.5 tons of steel run on Saturday. Probably another 2 to 3 tons of steel left.

We have about 800lbs of aluminum extrusion and other high quality aluminum from the casino. 100+ lbs of copper, 500+lbs of stainless, about 100 linear feet of 2" diameter brass tubing, and maybe 100 or more pounds of connectors, and so on. (if anybody ever needed a source for their own brass pole, I'm your huckleberry.)

Those folks kept EVERYTHING. We threw away so many empty boxes, and so much broken crap, that for the life of me, no regular person would ever keep. After doing 5 or so of these trash outs, I now do a deep clean twice a year on my shop, and it is still packed.

Sweet!

A flat bar and a hammer will get a lotta demo done....

the Milwaukee Torch blades are the best on the market, and the ones to use... they will out last any other metal cutting blade, including the Lenox blades...

We went through 35 of those "torch" blades.

you would have went through 100 Lenox blades then...

were you using the fat ones? about 1 1/2 inches wide?

Yup. Screws did in a fair amount of the blades, and then the weld material was second. Had a fair amount of failures where the blade tang goes into the chuck. We had Bosch, Milwaukie, and Rigid saws, and tang breakage rates were the same on all.

Surprisingly, the shorter blades lasted longer.

Did you save that "No Humping" sign as "THE" item from the car wash project?

Good job, DF.
That's some rotten looking sh!t.

Looks like you had a fun time doing it haha.
That kinda work always sucks to do.
Good job getting it off.

Like using chopsticks to build the great wall.

Id have used a track hoe.

And C-4.

another option when applicable, is the Porta-Band, as long as you can get the band where its needed, not really much can beat it, if anything at all... a few years back i had to cut 100+ pin piles that were about 1/4 inch thick, by 3 1/2 inches wide, without the Porta, i would still be there right now...

if you dont want to just shell out the bucks to buy one right now, i highly reccomend renting one first if you havent used one before... you wont be dissapointed...

Access was impossible for a portaband, but I am familiar with the tool. The last three bays actually came off pretty easily, with about 1/3 of the spot welds completely rusted through.

A track hoe would be nice, but then it would have made efficient stacking of the metal next to impossible because of the damage done to the sheets, and hauling away even more inefficient as we had to store it until tomorrow. Two of us working for about 12 hours each got it off the decking.

Are these the good Sawzall blades?

I think it's safe to say that the Torch blade is the best metal cutting Sawzall blade.
The ones I end up with are white.

Keep the motor RPM low and they will last longer.

The black ones are for tile and other materials.

No cutting torch?

I'm glad you got the project done.
From the pictures of those spot welds, I still don't understand why a hole saw wouldn't have been the way to go, though. :shrug:

I have a cutting torch but I can't damage the I beams.

'Specially when you were being held up well above a concrete slab by same....



As a forensic structural engineer, I have seen just about every structural component of a building removed or Swiss-cheesed by inept contractors/owners with various saws/torches. A goodly number were on the ground as testament to same.....

Pretty much. I also intend to sell the property for use as a future car wash, so I wanted to mantain all of the structural integrity, doing minimal damage to: the beams, the metal sheets for ease of disposal, and most importantly, me and my brother.

There really wasn't a fast way to do that and accomplish all three.

No doubt you knew what you were doing, Andy. My tongue-in-cheek comment was leaning towards those proffering assistance that don't....

Looks like alot of demo work. Good job.

Curious, were you tied off? Not sure of WISHA/OSHA compliance depending upon the status of "contractor" vs "joe home-owner"?

Looked like they had warning lines and worked the edges from tied off ladders.

This is how we do it.

The hand railings were set up around perimeter, and all tie off lines were hidden for dramatic effect.

Ship breaking, nice! Got to use my cutting torch yesterday to take down a few old lighted sign posts, 4" and 10" in diameter. Took a bit to get the hang of it, my cuts weren't straight, but the metal came down with a crash. Notched it like a tree and pulled both down with my truck and a cable. Only one minor burn when a hot spark hit my hat and kept on going.