I am looking to install a synthetic mainline to my Timberjack. Injury means that I can't pull steel cable easily.
What do people do to fit them to the drum? Big loop around the wedge that goes into the drum on a Hercules winch?
And the end of the line, what is stopping the sliders?
Thanks
Ive never used it in the woods, ive spliced miles of 3-8-12 strand lines from 3/8 to large hawser. Its amazing stuff, ive heard 2-2.5x stronger than wire of the same diameter. In 15yrs ive seen 3 pieces of it break, almost no snap back. The biggest problem is chafe and friction wear, if it rubs on anything sharp its done. You may never pull on it hard enough to glaze it, little bit on the outside doesnt hurt. All depends how your drum is set up, and what the distributor supplies you with for an end, you can do some awesome splices with that and make it look smooth on your drum. I dont know whats available for sliders ? Or what you plan on using, again friction kill and try not to "shock load" it to much.
Teufelberger - European forestry ropes using dyneema, have metal ends bonds and plastic twitch hooks.
https://www.teufelberger.com/en/products-services/forestry-ropes/hauling-ropes-for-add-on-winches-and-skidding-winches.html
https://www.teufelberger.com/pub/media/contentmanager/content/downloads/15-10-13_STRATOS-Gesamtfolder-EN_Web.pdf
Sounds like you need a yoader type winch with a power out feature.
Oddly enough I own another business where we supply hundreds of thousands of feet of Spectra / Dynema line a year sourced from a few manufactures, but made to our specifications. Spectra is a wonderful winch line with very little strength. It is weakened greatly though by tying knots, and loses most of it's strength once you hit 320 degrees. The only way to connect it to anything is by splicing the line. Samson braids it's spectra on a 12 carrier system and it is VERY hard to splice. We have our lines made on a 16 carrier machine, specifically designed with a hollow core to be easy to splice. If it were myself, I'd pass the line through the drum core of the winch and splice it back onto itself. At the free end to hold the chokers I'd pass it through a swedge and splice it back onto itself. It won't like being drug over logs, and around corners, but it's amazingly resilient. If you see a damaged section, rather than cut it out we simply take a section of scrap line and one of our fids and feed it through the core so it extends 3 - 4 feet either side of the damage. I've got a line on one of our paraglider towboats that has yet to be replaced after 8 years of use and over 8000 tows getting paraglider pilots up 3500' over the lake. It's been repaired a few times, but we've never found the need to replace it yet. Spectra is some cool stuff.
Stuart, I have seen 8 and 12 thread braids. Are you saying that the 12 is hard to splice and I should look for 16 thread line?
Those puck ends look good on the European site, I just can't find a local supplier so far.
Thanks
I have Amsteel or one of it's cousins for all my winches. Two of the machines have ½ inch line.
Look for nylon straps that are a tube. It's used for making backpacks and other stuff. Slide a 20 foot piece ( or more ) of the nylon over the line before you splice the end.
I had to splice the end on one of the ½" lines and it wasn't too hard just tedious. Didn't take me too long to break that end off ( the ON button of the winch got pushed by something and the hook end of the line was attached to the winch frame....)
Make a cover for the winch line. UV is what ruins most plastics.
Amsteel is pretty easy to splice, its much stronger if you use an eyelet on any splice connection.
I had some trouble with 3/4" amsteel splices on some chokers i made from scraps someone gave me. I couldnt get the tail buried enough fid lengths without bungling the inner braid. I broke two of them and switched to a brummel lock splice for the fatter ropes. 3/8 and 1/2 amsteel are easy though.