CONSTRUCTION on the world's biggest tractor sculpture, a replica of the Chamberlain 40K, is nearing completion after six months of intensive work at DIAB Engineering in Geraldton.
The gargantuan structure, bound for Carnamah, home to Hal Walton's John Deere tractor museum, has been years in the making according to Carnamah farmer and chairman of the Carnamah Big Tractor Project committee, Brendon Haeusler.
"It took three years for us to raise just over $500,000 to start with," Mr Haeusler said.
"Our initial quote was a fair bit less but it kept going up and we got the quote redone a fair amount."
Mr Haeusler has provided a project update.
"When we were up there (in Geraldton where the replica is being built) a couple of weeks ago, we saw about 80 per cent of the fabrication was completed," he said.
"So they're going to put it all together in Geraldton before they ship it to Carnamah to make sure it holds up and doesn't require extra bracing.
"Then they'll paint it, and then pull it to bits again, bring it to Carnamah and put it together on site."
Mr Haeusler said they were still accepting donations for the project, which can be made through www.carnamah.com.au/donate.
DIAB Engineering design draftsman Xavier Sequeira was put in charge of the replica tractor project - he co-ordinates with Tracmach's upper management and the workers on the floor.
Mr Sequeira said DIAB, which usually specialises in mining work, put in a competitive bid to Tracmach to build the steel tractor replica due to the company's chief executive officer Glen Payne's fondness for the Chamberlain 40K tractor.
"He's got the Chamberlain 40K and his family has a farming history around the Mid West - so when the tender came through, when he heard about the project Tracmach was looking to outsource, he put in a strong competitor's bid on it and we were successful," Mr Sequeira said.
Once DIAB received the 2D designs of the replica Chamberlain 40K tractor, staff put it through a 3D CAD (computer-aided design) which was a critical part of the process that saved DIAB a lot of time on the floor.
Mr Sequeira said the job was a change of pace for their company.
"This job is a lot of sheet work," he said.
"Obviously you do a bit of sheet work in the shop every now and then, but this is 90 per cent of this job - they've had to upskill guys on the floor to be able to do this job but they've enjoyed it, it's a bit of a change for them."
Moreover, it was a job that called for all hands-on deck.
"Basically everybody in the shop has had a hand in this; you're looking at about 50 guys on and off," Mr Sequeira said.
"Full time there's always about six to a dozen people working on it, in the last three months especially."
One of the biggest challenges for Mr Sequeira and his team to overcome was the sheer size of the materials they were putting together.
"Some of the sizes of these sheets are huge, some are eight to nine metres," he said.
"There's a lot of heat that goes into that process, a lot of welding, so that means for us, we have to be aware of warping the steel.
"It's a big thing to overcome, we had to put a lot of structures in place when we were welding to mitigate the excess heat that goes into these sheets."
Mr Sequeira said a workaround for this was to simply cut the large sheets down to workable sizes and reweld them later.
"A big job for us at the moment are the treads on the rear tyres," he said.
"We rolled segments for the rear tyre and welded it - the tyre is about 8m in diametre and then on the outside of that we had to put 72 knobby treads on each tyre.
"We had to make sure that it was, aesthetically, as close to the original as possible.
"That requires lots of intricate grinding, and it's an ongoing challenge."
Aesthetic fidelity to the Chamberlain 40K's grill required deft hands as well, and additional steel was used to stiffen that part, he added.
Before the replica can be shipped off to Carnamah, Mr Sequeira said a mock assembly would be completed at the workshop.
"For us to fully assemble it onsite, it has to be fully painted and onsite, we cannot do any hot works - welding, grinding," he said.
"We don't know how structurally sound this is yet - it has to withstand the elements, of wind, rain, the occasional cyclone.
"So we're going to assemble it, see if we need to add any more more steel to it to make it structurally better."
Mr Sequeira said once the structural strength passed muster, they would fully paint the replica Chamberlain 40K tractor and give Tracmach a date on completion.
"Looking at it now, we're confident it should be the end of June," he said.
Mr Sequeira laid out some statistics that conveyed the sheer magnitude of work involved.
"You're looking at 42 tonnes of steel in this tractor, around 2000 parts that we've cut and welded together, and we anticipate using 10,000 litres of paint," he said.
"This is a biggie."
