Light Gauge steel news from the Americas

Friday, 18 May 2007 02:00:41 (GMT+3)   |  
       

Man to combine favorite activities with underwater sword-swallowing feat

On Friday, May 18, a man will attempt to swallow a solid steel sword while submerged fifteen feet underwater in a tank filled with live sharks and stingrays at Ripley's Aquarium in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

Dan Meyer, the man who will perform this insane feat, is a professional sword swallower from Nashville, Tennessee and Executive Director of the Sword Swallowers Association International (Yes, apparently there is such an organization).

"Swallowing a solid steel sword is incredibly dangerous enough as it is on dry land," Mr. Meyer told to press. "Last year while swallowing five swords at once, I ended up in the hospital with a serious injury that almost killed me - a punctured stomach that caused fluid around my heart and lungs. The pain was incredible, and I couldn't swallow solid food for several weeks."

Why would someone do attempt to do something this ridiculously dangerous? The sword swallower explained, "I've swallowed swords for the past several years, and I swam with sharks and sting rays when I lived on an island in the Bahamas for several years, so I know I can do each of them separately. It just seemed natural to put the two challenges together. The question is -- will I be able to do BOTH of them at the same time and survive?"

The public will find out 9:00 a.m. Friday at Ripley's Aquarium, 1110 Celebrity Circle in Myrtle Beach, SC.

Woman falls through steel sidewalk grate

A pedestrian suffered minor injuries Thursday when she fell at least 10 feet through the heavy steel mesh lid of a sidewalk transformer vault in midtown Manhattan.

The woman fell through the vault, located on West 51st Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, shortly after 7 a.m. before she was rescued by two firefighters, authorities said.

Fire Department spokesman Craig Mosia said that the woman was not in the 10- to 12- foot deep hole for long and was never in any danger from electricity.

Consolidated Edison, the company which provides gas and electricity to New York City, is currently investigating how the steel lid could have given way. According to Con Ed spokesperson Chris Olert, "you need a very heavy tool" to open it.

Luckily, the woman who acted as the "heavy tool" suffered no major injuries. Neither her name or her weight were immediately disclosed.

Pig pens no fun for pigs

A new study from researchers at Iowa State University shows that the small, steel "gestation crates" used to confine pregnant pigs may not be necessary.

The 2-year study showed that allowing the pregnant sows to move freely in group housing structures called "hoop barns" could be less costly and just effective as the individual crates.

"What we found was that there appears to be no real difference in pig performance between the two," said Peter Lammers, the ISU graduate research assistant who conducted the data analysis for the study.

While the pork industry has defended the use of the steel crates, which allow producers to cram as many pigs as possible into one building, the new study found that the sows in hoop barns actually gave birth to more live pigs per litter and that the pigs were produced at a much lower cost - as much as 11 percent less per weaned pig - than the gestation stalls.

The hoop barns are also considerably more humane, as the crates force the "highly intelligent, curious animals into a 2-foot-by-7 foot cage that doesn't even allow them to turn around," said Wayne Pacelle, CEO of the Humane Society of the United States.

More discussion of this and other swine-related topics can be found at http://www.thepigsite.com/, a global pig and pork industry website.

Couple uses steel laminate to save 40,000 pound piece of art

A husband and wife duo who operate an art gallery in Chelsea, New York had to go to great lengths to save a historical mural painted on a wall of a building that was being demolished.

The mural was painted by iconic New York pop artist Keith Haring, on one a wall of a former boys' club on the Lower East Side, a building which was set to be destroyed.

In order to save the mural, husband and wife team Alberto Magnan and Dara Mentz had to move the entire 40,000 pound wall in one piece. First the wall had to be isolated while the surrounding building was demolished.

The concern was that the 19 by 19 foot wall might not be able to stand alone, so they had to protect the artwork and reinforce the wall with steel so that it wouldn't crumble.

"We stripped the paint from the back of the wall and laminated it completely with steel," said Pat Tarrant, the couple's friend who they hired to do the job.

Amazingly, despite some problems with the rigging, they were able to lift the wall with a crane in its entirety and place it in a flatbed truck to transport it to the gallery. If the wall had crumbled, Magnan and Mentz would have been out $250,000.

Mr. Magnan said that he was unsure how the market would react to the piece by the beloved artist, who died in 1990, but that it could fetch from $2 to $10 million.