Ironworkers are a rare breed. Kings of the hard hats, they build towers to the sky, parting the clouds as they work.
They swing tons of steel, bully beams into place, scamper up the iron skeletons of high rises and inch out along the spans of bridges. They work hard, live dangerously and are tight-knit. Because their lives depend on each other, they must communicate clearly and quickly, so they speak an argot of their own. For example:
Punkin: An apprentice ironworker who does jobs such as running for coffee and getting tools for the journeymen.
Rivet: Another nickname for an apprentice.
Joe McGee: An ironworker who is sloppy at his job and makes mistakes. (The derivation is unknown.)
Pusher: The foreman.
Topping off: When the last piece of structural steel is set. The ironworkers paint the last beam white and sign their names on it. If an ironworker is killed during construction, a plaque is attached to it with his name on it.
Headache ball: The large, round, steel ball weighing 500 to 1,000 pounds that hangs from the end of a construction crane’s cable. It has a hook on the bottom and is used to keep the cable from rolling back up on itself.
Doing a do-si-do: Swinging a large steel beam 180 degrees from the direction it’s going.
Pea whistle: Same as a do-si-do (derivation unknown).
Beater: A sledgehammer.
Chokers: The cables that are wrapped around the steel beams and used to raise them to their setting.
Raising gang: The crew that sets the structural steel.
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Rig: The mobile crane on wheels that raises the beams and sets them in place. This crane stays on the ground.
Crawler crane: The crane that works atop the structure, raising the beams by cable.
Monkey tail: The safety lines attached to an ironworker’s belt.
Sparks: A welder.
Story job: A high-rise being built.
Getting blown out: When bad weather and high winds close down the work day.
Come along: A ratchet tool that ironworkers use to clamp onto a beam and pull it into place.
Rod buster: The worker who sets the reinforced steel rods that are to be covered by concrete.
The hospital side: The location of someone standing in the path of a beam being raised by cable.
Shaking the iron out: The breaking down of a pile of beams as they are hoisted into place.
Years ago, before ironworkers used bolts to connect beams, they used rivets. The ironworkers worked in four-man teams consisting of:
The riveter: The man who used a rivet gun and put the rivets in place.
The bucker upper: The man who held the rivets in place.
The heater: The man who heated the rivets white hot so they would be malleable before being inserted into the beams.
The catcher: The man who caught the white-hot rivets from the heater and passed them on to the bucker upper.