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Introduction
Make or break
Rope tricks
Perfect performance

The excavator crane is in the back of a warehouse in Blantyre near Glasgow when the Squad first see it. It has not run for 15 years and is in need of some serious restoration work.

The Ruston Bucyrus 10RB was the workhorse of the British construction trade, and 6,000 of them were made between 1931 and 1969. During the 1950s and '60s there was a 10RB on nearly every building site. The builders' equivalent of the Swiss army knife, the 10RB was extremely versatile and could be fitted with a dragline, a face shovel, a lifting hook or even a wrecking ball.

The Salvage Squad's crane is owned by Donald Steele, a Scottish plant manager who works with the most modern machinery on huge construction projects but has a lingering affection for the small, sturdy 10RBs that he used to watch as a boy.

Donald is very keen to see the 10RB rigged with a dragline and put to work, but Suggs reckons it would be fun to use it with a wrecking ball and smash something up. They agree that they will try both techniques once the work is finished.

The 10RB is a well-built, solid machine but it still requires a large amount of work from the Squad. Jerry works on the 34hp diesel engine and the caterpillar tracks, Axel sorts out the damaged jib and works on fabricating a new cab, while Claire relines the clutches and brakes.

The Squad are helped by Willie Middlemass, a retired fitter, and John McCall a retired driver, who, between them, have more than 100 years of experience with RBs.

Suggs is given the task of having some new steel ropes made. He visits the Bridon Ropes factory near Lincoln to see the fascinating process by which they are manufactured.

The process starts with 'wire-drawing': a coil of thick wire is stretched into thin wire through a wiredrawing machine. This makes the wire stronger and more flexible.

The wire is pulled by a capstan through a wiredrawing die and collected on a wooden reel.

The reels of wire are then put on bobbins and threaded down to a forming point, where they are spun together into a strand on the 'double twist buncher'.

Six-strand reels are then loaded into the 'tubular closer' a machine that spins the strands into rope. The six strands are threaded through a forming point and spun around a core strand. This process puts the helix into the rope which, when finished, is extremely strong.

The rope that Suggs has helped to make is then 'reaved' on to the jib of the 10RB – woven through the pulleys and clutches.

The 10RB is tried out on a freezing day in a gravel pit outside Glasgow. It looks splendid repainted in its original RB colours and Donald Steele hugely enjoys putting it through its paces as a dragline.

But Suggs and the Squad are not going to be done out of their fun. They rig the jib with a half-tonne wrecking ball and everybody has a smashing time demolishing a scrap van.