English Reeve

[softbankhawks]

For those that don't know of an English Reeve it is a system designed to move loads horizontally and vertically - 4 ways - up / down / left / right (there's loads of good information from a quick google word search). I've been talking to Mike Popham about the system for a couple of months and was waiting for the opportunity to try it out and I'm very glad that we managed it. I think that at first glance it all seems overly complex but believe me from never doing it, working it all out on site, installation took us 3 hours and I'm positive that time will be wittled down with some practice and experience. Our sites are along railway lines and often with high voltage wires, we will stay at a site some times up to a month so for us setting this up in future is going to save a lot of ball aching with rigging planning, setting, dismantling.

We used it for 2 days this time and have only scratched the surface of its use, we pulled tops and trunks and then lifted the trunks up into one area. I've been mulling over uses for it arboreally, with the size and shape of these larch and red pine it makes so much sense to lift out multiple branches in one swipe.

 

The set up contains 2 anchor trees with two guy ropes on each. On each tree there are three anchor points. The top is the left/right pull line anchor, middle is the main traverse line and bottom is the lift line. We used a large impact block for the trolley and tied the pull lines into the hole. A soft shackle joined the reeve to the impact block. The reeve is a rigging plate and 3 pulleys. It gives mechanical advantage to the lift. All the ropes were run back to the 'control station'. 1 portable honda winch was used to control everything.

 

Does anyone have experience with this system? How/Why did you use it?

 

The winch man complained of massive twisting in the lift rope which made his work a pain. I think it was because we used Samson nystron which is s t r e t c h y , perhaps a class2 would be better?

[softbankhawks]

piks ..

[softbankhawks]

piks ..

[softbankhawks]

uploading 1 at a time...sheese lou-ise....I've put the rest on my blog....thewoodenhand.tumblr.com

[colemanjessenz]

hey soft banks, really nice work man , i can always appreciate a good setup.

its to common for people to just want to muscle it out sometimes when a much more user friendly way is just going to take an hour or so longer for organising. i have just seen the post and think its awesome mate.

[softbankhawks]

Thanks dude, wondered why this thread has had no interest for other arbtalkers?

Is nobody interested in rigging practice !!?

[colemanjessenz]

im not sure mate beats me , i checked out your blog and thinks its wicked man , how long have you been over in japan for ?

[Gary Prentice]

Thanks dude, wondered why this thread has had no interest for other arbtalkers?

Is nobody interested in rigging practice !!?

 

Bit advanced for my needs, we've only just stopped wrapping around the trunk:lol:

 

 

So this would be the basis of the skyline (?) as used in forestry extraction, before the motorised dolly thing that lifts the timber.

[urbandekay]

Love it, like to see more detail of pulley set up, etc

[Shane]

My brain caught fire trying to figure out what was going on.

 

Looks interesting but complex.

 

Can't say I've ever been defeated by something that NEEDED this as a solution, but who knows, tomorrow I may need it.