[HN Gopher] Fred Dibnah shows how to erect a chimney scaffold at...
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Fred Dibnah shows how to erect a chimney scaffold at 200 feet
(1982) [video]
Author : stevekemp
Score : 92 points
Date : 2025-09-28 10:52 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| n1b0m wrote:
| He once survived a near-fatal fall. In 1997, Dibnah was almost
| killed when a 2,500-ton concrete chimney on Canvey Island
| collapsed prematurely. He tripped while running from the falling
| structure, but luckily, the chimney corrected itself and fell in
| the opposite direction
| stevekemp wrote:
| His wikipedia page is worth reading for that, and other
| details:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Dibnah
|
| Definitely one of a kind.
| alangibson wrote:
| Chimneys feared him
| gorgoiler wrote:
| Oddly, the Dibnah near-death experience I _most_ remember
| giving me the willies was when he dropped his cap in a puddle
| just after scratching his bonce. Having wrung his cap out he
| put it straight back on. The water had a dead pigeon in it
| though and so he ended up catching a virus which started
| spreading through his head via the cap and the cut. It got
| quite serious out of nowhere.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| How do you not notice a dead pigeon in your cap?
| gorgoiler wrote:
| Here's the tale, told by the man himself:
|
| https://www.tiktok.com/@uandyesterday/video/734963764676056
| 1...
| trebligdivad wrote:
| Fred Dibnah videos are my goto for showing people heavy local
| English accents; it's rare you hear one that heavy any more, but
| they can be local down to only a few miles.
| tomfanning wrote:
| > it's rare you hear one that heavy any more
|
| With respect, this is nonsense.
| trebligdivad wrote:
| Huh ok, I'm curious where; I don't live that far from Bolton,
| and can't remember hearing anything that thick in many years.
| (Last time was actually near Liverpool).
| scandox wrote:
| This one makes my palms sweaty:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R3-YwDZrzg
|
| And it's just a ladder really.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| > The U.S had the space programme, the U.K had Fred Dibnah and
| an infinite supply of ladders.
|
| Had some funny comments that video.
| Tsiklon wrote:
| I like how he describes the mood or feeling of the chimneys
| he's climbed. Villainous or friendly.
| nickdothutton wrote:
| A man out of his time somehow. I enjoyed his shows as a boy.
| philo23 wrote:
| I don't know why Fred keeps getting posted to HN, but I love it.
| and I'm glad more people get to see his work.
|
| Something that might not be immediately obvious from this clip is
| that all the sound effects you're hearing of the planks bouncing
| and scraping off the bricks, the iron dogs being hammered into
| the brickwork or wind blowing etc, is all recreated and recorded
| after the fact in some BBC sound studio. There's no sound guy up
| there with a boom mic or even a lapel mic recording, yet all the
| sound effects are perfectly audible. Even the ones around the
| other side of the chimney. If they didn't dub them in afterwards
| the video recording from the ground level would be quite boring!
|
| Though there are a couple of other recordings of Fred with a one-
| man camera crew up at the top once he's got the platform fully
| setup.
|
| Besides, I suspect if he was mic'd up there'd be quite a bit more
| swearing than you'd be able to get away with on the BBC!
| card_zero wrote:
| He was a tinkerer, I guess it still counts as hacking when it's
| traction engines. I vaguely remember him getting in legal
| trouble for digging a coal mine in his garden.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Worth watching to the end if you want a great sensation of
| vertigo.
| ClarkMarx wrote:
| As someone who grew up in a family of Steeplejacks (my father was
| third generation), I am always amazed and delighted by the amount
| of attention Dibnah got in his day in the UK and continues to get
| today via the internet. Here in the states, people would always
| just look at me like I had two heads when I told them what the
| family business was.
|
| This is interesting and not at all how we would rig a smokestack
| (as we call them). I worked for the company in the early 90s but
| we were using rigging that was built by the company in the 60s or
| earlier. In relation to how we did it his solution seems to me to
| be overly complicated and perhaps a bit more dicey than what we
| were doing.
|
| I can write something up if anyone is interested in how we did
| it.
| nocoiner wrote:
| Yes, please. I'd really like to read that.
| mauvehaus wrote:
| Count me interested!
|
| I've spent more time on scaffolding and a roof ladder this
| summer than I hoped I'd ever do in my life, and i don't think
| you'd get me on any of Fred Dibnah's ladders at gunpoint. I
| still find it fascinating to see how it's done by people who've
| made it their trade.
| trial3 wrote:
| if i may ask a question that betrays my lack of knowledge: why
| is it that permanent or semi-permanent ladders were not be
| affixed to some of the steeples? is it mostly aesthetics, or is
| it also a wear / durability concern?
|
| i also suppose the ladder only gives you access to one portion
| of the chimney, and you may need to access enough different
| sections that the most effective method is to set up a ladder
| exactly where you need it while work is done?
| afandian wrote:
| I would guess there was no stainless or galvanisation
| available in the era they were built.
|
| I wouldn't trust permanently installed ladders that were
| completely exposed to the elements! Unlike the bigger iron
| structures, ladders have quite a high surface area/ volume
| ratio.
|
| I wouldn't climb up Fred's ladders in a million years, but at
| least there was a quality feedback loop!
| recursivecaveat wrote:
| My understanding is that the stacks were built with a tower
| of scaffolding on the inside. So it may have been too
| inconvenient for them to add a ladder on the outside, while
| the heat on the inside meant it wouldn't have lasted?
|
| There's anothing video of him setting up the ladder on a
| stack: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Keq-Lig-z74 while
| definitely sketchy it doesn't seem nearly as bad as the
| process to make the platforms, which he has to repeat over
| and over while knocking it down. So in that respect I'm not
| sure it would've saved him much time overall.
| alt227 wrote:
| > There's anothing video of him setting up the ladder on a
| stack: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Keq-Lig-z74
|
| At 16:20 in that video, it shows the camera crew in a
| cherry picker filming at the same height as him. Ive always
| thought that Freds chimney days were pre technology like
| this. but why would he not just put the scaffold platform
| up in a cherry picker to start with instead of spending
| days fixing a gazillion ladders to the side of a chimney?
| ClarkMarx wrote:
| You mentioned steeples first. That may have been a mistake,
| but I will answer anyway. You climb a steeple from the inside
| and exit from a door at the base of, or on, the spire. From
| there we would typically build a platform on which to erect
| our ladder to go as far up the spire as needed.
|
| All the stacks I worked on, save one I can remember, had
| beacon lights that needed regular maintenance and all had
| ladders built in. The ladders did not go all the way to the
| ground/roof level. That was to keep unauthorized folks from
| climbing it.
|
| I remember two stacks had permanent catwalks around the top.
| One of them was quite corroded and not a comfortable place to
| walk. Like a sibling comment mentioned, that difficulty in
| maintaining them is a reason why many stacks don't have
| ladders. Some stacks that don't have them once did, but they
| were removed due to corrosion.
|
| As far as access, all of the stacks I worked on had only one
| ladder. If the job was small and there was work that needed
| to be completed on the other side we had two options.
|
| 1. If the repair was low enough we could attach the ropes
| from which we hung our bosun's chair at the top and swing
| around to the other side.
|
| 2. If the repair was too high to do that or too involved we
| would build a scaffold all the way around the stack.
| ClarkMarx wrote:
| Imagine a 5/8"(16mm) cable running through 6"x6" (14cmx14cm)
| pressure treated blocks about 4 feet (1.2 meters) apart. The
| cable gets wrapped around the stack and connected to itself
| through a turnbuckle which is tightened to provide tension.
|
| Now think of a steel right triangle with the legs being the
| vertical and horizontal aspect with the hypotenuse supporting
| the horizontal leg. The horizontal leg has a vertical tube
| welded where it meets the hypotenuse. The vertical leg as a
| hook curving down from the top away from the horizontal leg and
| a wooden pad at the bottom. We called these stackjacks but a
| Google search tells me that may have just been what we called
| them and not their actual name.
|
| The hook hangs on the cable discussed above and the pad rests
| against the smokestack. 2 2"x12" (4cm x 29cm) walkboards are
| laid between these stackjacks. The vertical tube at the end
| accepts poles to which a railing is attached.
|
| TLDR look at these photos of a company that does it exactly how
| we did. https://apexchimney.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2024/02/exteriori...
| https://apexchimney.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/IMGP40400...
| jmchambers wrote:
| I grew up a short walk from where he lived, in Bolton, and you'd
| often see him setting up all the gear, solo, at the base of one
| of the local chimneys. We'd pull over on our bikes and shout "Is
| it coming down Fred?". He never failed to stroll over and have a
| chat about what he was doing. A genuinely nice chap.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| I lived real close to Fred's house for a while. Loved it.
| Bolton was way cool back then.
| onion2k wrote:
| Impressive as Dibnah absolutely is, give a thought to cameraman
| who climbed that chimney with a 1980s film camera to record the
| footage from the top. :)
| outofmyshed wrote:
| If you want to understand the UK, Dibnah is where to start. I
| named my cat after him.
| mrlonglong wrote:
| I think H&S would have thrown fits about the lack of safety
| equipment if he still did any of that nowadays. The good old
| days, not so much. Men often died doing this sort of work and
| still do to a lesser degree.
| yosser wrote:
| I used to live just down the road from Fred Dibnah's house when I
| was in my early 20's. It was quite an interesting old building
| with a fairly steeply sloping garden that led down to an old
| workshop packed with steam engines and similar mechanical bric a
| brac. Despite the layout you could easily see down to the bottom
| of the garden from the pavement as you passed by.
|
| I had a sort of standing joke where I would wind my girlfriend up
| by pointing out that it was Fred Dibnah's place every time we
| walked past. I did this perhaps a little too often.
|
| One day, she had had enough and told me in a very loud voice that
| 'she couldn't give a shit if it was Fred Dibnah's house'. That's
| when I saw his startled face peering up from behind a traction
| engine. Sorry Fred. I hope you can forgive me from that big old
| chimney in the sky.
| Fairburn wrote:
| Very much enjoyed that. Thanks
| afandian wrote:
| BCM Steeplejacks has great write ups and pictures of the jobs
| they do. Lots of modern equipment, but at the end of the day it's
| still very high up and they rely on the strength of their own
| hands.
|
| https://steeplejacks.scot/lots-of-jobs-and-pictures/
| 2ICofafireteam wrote:
| I used to show a clip to new helpers/labourers of Fred taking
| down a chimney one brick at a time because it beautifully showed
| what a person can do if they just get at it and keep at it.
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(page generated 2025-09-28 23:01 UTC)