Building the Ravenel Bridge


After all the photos I took, I've tried to arrange them in some order based on various topics I found interesting.

And a reminder from T.S. Eliot (East Coker from the Four Quartets)

Old men ought to be explorers
Here and there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion

David Wertz was my guide on many visits to the bridge and shared with me much of the construction details that I have included in these pages. When David did not know the answer to a question, he always provide a link to other sources of information. So, without David and his colleagues at SCDOT, these web pages would have been limited to my weekly trips to the SC Aquarium.

David appears in many disguises - here as the parking attendent at the west pylon dock

Here he is on one of his inspection trips

Here he is, inspecting the gap to determine whether the splice girder is long enough

Here he is measuring the gap.

And here he is, after looking at what he just measured

After a year of interacting with David - he is off to San Diego with his new wife. David has done so much to open back doors for me so that I could explore the inside-the-skunk-works part of precision building. A big thanks from Frank to David.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

C. Frank Starmer

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