Rigging alternatives

[slack ma girdle]

16 minutes ago, Con said:

I'm with Mick. I can't see any advantage gained by devices and gadgets

99 times out of a 100, you are right. But the 1 time a device makes all the difference.

[slack ma girdle]

47 minutes ago, 5thelement said:

Anyone using these? 

Wot be that?

[Mark Bolam]

39 minutes ago, Mick Dempsey said:

Rigging rings/topping strops, not really a technological leap is it?

I thought it was a step backwards tbh, but people seem to like them.

I haven’t tried them.

[Mick Dempsey]

Just now, Mark Bolam said:

I thought it was a step backwards tbh, but people seem to like them.

I haven’t tried them.

Yeah, they’re good, easy to install, seem robust enough for all but insane loads.

[Pete Mctree]

The safe bloc is a great tool to have in the box. Really shines when you have difficulty accessing the base of the tree to attach a device. 
Rigging, like most things in tree work, is often limited by our imagination/common sense or lack of.

[Con]

9 minutes ago, Pete Mctree said:

The safe bloc is a great tool to have in the box. Really shines when you have difficulty accessing the base of the tree to attach a device. 
Rigging, like most things in tree work, is often limited by our imagination/common sense or lack of.

Nail on head 👍

[AHPP]

1 hour ago, 5thelement said:

Anyone using these? 

 

How are they better than a steel biner besides the lack of (insiginficant in my opinion) spine bending? They look fiddlier and no faster.

Edited Tuesday at 20:34 by AHPP

[Mick Dempsey]

In the mid nineties in my first year in the job I worked with a 55 year old, he didn’t like me much and the feeling was mutual.

On one rare occasion I was allowed to climb we had a decent size oak to wreck in a bit of woodland, he let me do it as it was easier for him to ground on this tree than climb as there was no clear up.

 

We used three strand bullrope as rigging rope in those days.

Repeatedly walking round the tree to gain friction would have been a ballache and time consuming, so to avoid doing that he cut a nearby Holly down to two feet and left two or three side branches to a foot or so to create a natural porta wrap.

If you’ve ever tried to uproot a Holly you’ll know how resistant they are to being pulled out and he knew that.

Big branches and lumps bombed down on the rope held fast by this stump, with wraps round a branch or two of the Holly to add friction.

 

Is there a point to this story? Maybe not, but at a push I’d say that there’s not much new that hasn’t been done in one form or another since the start of guys working with ropes and trees.

 

Except for the pre tensioning/lifting of loads with the devices I’ve already mentioned, guys were dealing with the rigging problems we faced, and dealing with them in different ways before we’d drawn breath.

 

 

Edited Tuesday at 20:54 by Mick Dempsey

[Mark Bolam]

But things are so shiney now!

[peds]

3 minutes ago, Mick Dempsey said:

We used three strand bullrope as rigging rope in those days, repeatedly walking round the tree to gain friction would have been a ballache and time consuming, so to avoid doing that he cut a nearby Holly down to two feet and left two or three side branches to a foot or so to create a natural porta wrap.

If you’ve ever tried to uproot a Holly you’ll know how resistant they are to being pulled out and he knew that.

Big branches and lumps bombed down on the rope held fast by this stump, with wraps round a branch or two of the Holly to add friction.

 

I'm going to save myself a bit of cash and invest in one of these bad boys instead of a GRCS!