Driving Steel Piles Wild

A few months back we posted Driving Concrete Piles Wild, which documented a Vulcan 020 being used on a project to drive concrete cylinder piles wild. Below is a video of a Vulcan 016 driving steel piles wild:

Vulcan 016 driving a steel pile pile wild. Contractor is J.E. Borries; video courtesy of Pile Hammer Equipment.

Driving piles–steel or concrete–wild (without leaders) is a tricky business. It requires that a) the contractor be very skilled in the art, b) the pile be “large” relative to the hammer and c) the pile to be plumb.

Vulcan’s literature featured an 030 driving pipe piles wild; that photo is shown below;