lowering with carabiners

[waitey]

working in Vancouver at the moment and EVERYBODY uses a carabiner on the end of the rigging line, even when were lowering big timber down.plus they complain when i dont use them..coming from the midlands, England its pretty taboo to do..there steel carabiners by the way. what are peoples thoughts? i need some fuel for the argument!!

[atree]

Vancouver awesome,Must be a lot of big firs then?

 

I use steel biners when my slings are too short even for rigging of itself on a spar,Dont see the problem as they are 50kn.

[treequip]

I use a steel biner to attach a balance rig and sometimes on big diameter timber as long as there is no danger of loading the biner across the spine.

 

A half hitch before the biner will reduce the load on it

[Steve Bullman]

I use the steel ISC 50kn karabiners for rigging as standard. They are plenty strong, but i replace them regularly too. I also double wrap them so most of the energy is absorbed by the bight in the rope and not the krab.

 

Of course snatching big lumps is a different story and the krabs come off for that.

[MOG]

i use Omega steel 65kn on majority of my rigging. even on big bits, the bigger the piece the more wraps i do around the log. following the same direction, then clip bineer back onto line.

 

With all the wraps around the log, loads of the energy goes into this, before the hitting the bineer. i dont use a half hitch as i was taught, as the bend ratio is to tight and then burns the rope on rope with the friction. i seen ropes snap right on that bend, due to this.

 

On very big bits, i use a d-shacktle on to splice (as a splice is stronger than knots, due to the same point of Bend ratio's). and then use same as you would with your bineer. this is mainly because the bend ratio is way better, due to the diameter of the d-shackle. and they usually are bit higher rated too.

 

cheers mog

[White Noise]

Aye like Steve says double wrap . Big steel crabs are cool for swinging round limbs .

[gibbon]

Not h&s cool in the UK but I think most people do it. I don't when snatching as the crab could still smash against the trunk. I think snatching is best done with the rigging line tied on with a simple knot. The less components there are in the system the smaller the chance is of something breaking.

[scottythepinetree]

Same as above, double wrap. Sometimes I even finish a clove-hitch with the biner clipped on to the side running to the half hitch. Clove-hitch is a fantastic knot just doesn't look like it will hold sometimes. All in my head, I know, but best to be double sure. Snatching is a different story though.

[Mesterh]

Same as most above, big steel crab 99% of the time except for snatching big stuff(although I don't usually rig massive bits out like some do because I'm a big girl)

 

I would probably lose the will to live if I had to tie every branch I rigged out or grounded for someone doing the above!

 

So yes you do deserve to get some stick.

 

Another thing, I big heavy crab helps when chucking the rope about when getting it further out on a limb or just throwing it over to limbs your about to work on.

[Mark Bolam]

As above, all day except for snatching.