Light Gauge steel news from the Americas

Scottsdale up in arms over steel garden In Scottsdale, Arizona, a controversy has arisen over a new garden to be added in a southern neighborhood as part of a revitalization program. But this isn't just any garden – it's a $50,000 garden of steel flowers erected atop 10-to-15 foot poles. While some of Scottsdale's affluent suburban residents fancy the idea of a whimsical metal flower art piece in the neighborhood of Cox Heights, some think it's just plain tacky. Virginia Lukian, a Cox Heights resident for 43 years, lives closest to the proposed garden. Her front door would open onto the flowers designed to spell out Cox Heights. "I'm going to have to look at this horrible-looking thing," she told press. "I think it looks gaudy and tacky." Opposition from residents like Ms. Lukian could halt the project, which needs to be completed by June 30, the end of Scottsdale's fiscal year, or else the funding will evaporate. Will the project be canned or will the steel flowers be erected to complement all of those bizarre metal horse statues that adorn the town? Only time will tell. Rebar saves the day In Wasco, California, a sleepy big rig driver took a KFC “drive thru” sign a bit too literally, crashing though Colonel Sanders' restaurant at 4:30 am Wednesday morning. After the driver fell asleep at the wheel, the produce-carrying big rig veered off the highway, jumped a curb, knocked over a metal pole, plowed through a KFC, then through a brick wall before coming to a stop in the backyard of another house. Bill Frederick, the owner of the house whose backyard the truck ended up in told press, “We feel very, very fortunate that no one was hurt. If it wasn't for the reinforcement and the rebar and the neighbor's chain link fence, it would have been in the house with us.” Meanwhile, the KFC employees will transfer to another KFC location while the Wasco location is rebuilt. Engineers re-think support system for glass bridge The Skywalk, a glass-bottomed bridge that will jut 70 feet over the Grand Canyon's edge, is nearing completion. The massive U-shaped steel structure now sits 20 feet from the cliff's edge, ready to be fastened to the cliff's edge for the big opening in March. Original drawings called for a glass structure with just a small bit of steel supporting the bridge, but the laws of physics convinced engineers to make the base thicker. The base is made of two 5-foot tall U-shaped steel walls, and a series of support beams connects the inner and outer walls of the bridge, leaving many open areas for the visitors to look down 4,000 feet to the bottom of the canyon. Once in place, the bridge will have no visible means of support, and will appear to emerge from the cliff. However, only half of the structure's total mass will be visible. The bulk of the support system, a series of eight box beams, each anchored 40 feet vertically into the cliff, will hold most of the bridge's load, to be hidden under a gift shop/restaurant. But the question remains . . . will you be brave enough to step out onto it? Will coal mining antique be scraped or saved? One of the last remaining relics of the coal mining days of northeastern Pennsylvania may be dismantled and sold for scrap, or it may be preserved as an antique of this bygone era. The fate of the Huber Breaker, a huge steel and glass structure once used to break, wash and size anthracite coal, hangs in the balance. Although the machine is now a dinosaur, hundreds of these coal breakers were once part of the northeastern Pennsylvania landscape in the 1800s and early 1900s, used to provide fuel and heat for the industrial revolution and the community that supported it. Al Roman, the owner of this particular Huber Breaker, one of the last remaining ones in the US, is now faced with a tough decision. Government and state officials want to turn the breaker into a museum, however, salvagers are offering Mr. Roman hundreds of thousands of dollars to sell the breaker for its high-grade steel. Mr. Roman wants the amount of cash he could get for the Breaker if he sold it for scrap, preferably in the form of government-owned land. But the government is only willing to offer him six acres. The Huber Breaker will be condemned if a decision is not made soon. Bill Best, president of the Huber Breaker Preservation Society said he believes they will be able to reach an agreement with Mr. Roman to save and restore the Huber Breaker, and soon. "It's never been this close for the dream to become a reality," he said.