FEATURE | BELOW-THE-HOOK
Caldwell’s model 90 carries rolls with the eye pointing skyward…
a below-the-hook lifter on a hoist or crane in, say, stonemasons’ yards. It can lift up to 200kg. It has a 400mm capacity clamping range and is available with either rubber- lined clamping faces or a metal tip to suit different finishes of stone. You can go for a more high-tech solution
from the same manufacturer should you wish. GGR’s GSK4600 Stone Lifter is a battery-driven vacuum-powered device. It is designed for lifting rough stone surfaces, concrete/stone stabs, or steel plate sections. It can carry out side lifts of up to 3,000kg and flat lifts of up to 4,600kg, making this a machine for lifting very sizable loads. The onboard battery pack gives a 12- hour operating cycle, and an auto cut-off
automatically switches off the pump when not in use to save energy. An audiovisual low vacuum warning notifies the operator if there is any loss of vacuum on the system, allowing the load to be lowered to the ground and secured as necessary.
SLABS Staying with that boulder-moving stonemason, he may well be cutting his stone – marble, granite, limestone, you name it – into slabs, for selling as worktops, paving, grave markers, tabletops and the like. Again, there are specialist below-the- hook devices for stone slabs. One such is the Kaiman Slab Lifting Clamp, from German makers Weha. This is a much more sophisticated machine than the scissor grab, though it works on a not dissimilar principle. It too is self-locking: this time the shackle lifting point to which your hoist is attached moves a rack-and-pinion arrangement
inside the casing, which brings the two flat rubber-lined clamping jaws closer together, thus gripping the stone slab ever more tightly. It is for slabs of between 20mm to 60mm thick, and has a capacity of 1,500kg. Yorkshire-based Stonegate Tooling is a company that like WeHa specialises in all aspects of stone fabrication, and so had developed its own below-the-hook lifter for stone slabs, but which is also suitable for ceramics, concrete, and indeed slabs of all kinds. Its Automatic Sky Rider Lifter has large pad dimensions of 490mm wide by 300mm high; the increased surface area is advantageous for lifting thinner materials, such as 4mm or 8mm porcelain. It, too, has rubber-lined faces to its jaws. We mentioned scissor grabs (aka tongs)
above, with reference to irregular shapes. Of course, a load does not have to be irregular in order to be lifted by tongs. Harrington makes a set specifically to lift long cylindrical loads – round bars, or cast or steel pipe of various diameters. Its HBTA adjustable bar tongs can be used singly – in which case the load must be balanced, in other words supported at its midpoint – or in pairs, each one gripping the pipe at some distance either side of the midpoint. They have capacities from 0.5 tons, with 4in (100mm) maximum width, and, on the 1.0-ton versions and upwards, a hold-open latch. Replaceable urethane pads protect the pipe from damage.
…while their Model 90P carries them with the eye horizontal. 32 | April 2025 |
www.hoistmagazine.com
ROLLS Rolls – of paper, of plastic film, of thin sheet steel, are another commonly lifted shape with its own specialised below-the-hook
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