Samson AmSteel Skidding Rope?

[Philobite]

Interesting stuff, Philobite. Your pictures reminded me of the time, years ago, when I helped build a cabin in the hills above Philo. We milled all the wood from trees on the property.

Wow! No way! Now when was that? Where was it, and who was it? I grew up here in the 60's and 70's so likely knew the folks. We're up Nash Mill Rd.

You mentioned how the Amsteel Blue would sometimes get slightly buried in the spool. Is this just a harmless irritation, or do you think it is hard on the rope? From an engineering point of view, winding the rope and winching would ideally be two separate operations--you pull with a capstan winch, but wind on a separate spool. Is such a thing available for your D7?

No the burying is a very minor irritation and totally harmless. Not hard on the rope. Don't know about the availability of the capstan winch, but it would all need to be operable with simplicity from the driver's seat for safety reasons. That's the beauty of the simple spool.

 

[woodfarmer]

great pics, keep them coming

 

[WidowMaker]

What's the trick here, I get a blank page when I click the link???

 

[Philobite]

Broken - repaired

Yesterday I managed to break the Amsteel Blue 5/8". It was totally my fault.

I was skidding two 25' x 2' logs up a steep grade and then horizontally onto the CAT trail. There was a tanoak in the way and only about 3 feet of the logs were above that when I tried to pull them around the tanoak... not wise on my part. In addition the CAT was at an acute angle so the line was not spooling straight onto the winch but was against the side of the rounded drum corner. Finally I had only about 12 feet of line out so there was no "give" to tell me how tight things were.

In any case the rope parted right where it was passing over the rounded winch drum corner... so failure was from extreme immovable load and rotating winch and a rather sharp bend over the side of the winch. It'd call it a friction heat plus overload failure.

Behavior of the rope during the break was superb. It did not snap or do anything violent. It merely parted and jumped about a foot and lay on the ground.

And now for the cool part. Despite never having done so before, by following the instructions we were able to repair the rope in about an hour, losing about 4 feet of rope in the break and repair, and then we put some massive loads on it with no problem. The repair seems just as strong as the original rope.

Try that with a wire rope. I've busted a bull line before... without the steel cage on the CAT the recoil would would have taken my head off (I'm so glad no choker setter was nearby to be injured or killed), and it took a whole day to run to the rigging place to have them put a new end nubbin on it, and I lost the 20 feet off the cable length too.

Anyway, thumbs up to the rope and thumbs down to my poor call on trying to skid around the tree. I cured that tree with a chainsaw.:greenchainsaw:

 

[WidowMaker]

Been trying to convince my son in laws that we should be using this in place of wire rope to skid wood logs with, think this might do it...

 

[Philobite]

Been trying to convince my son in laws that we should be using this in place of wire rope to skid wood logs with, think this might do it...

WidowMaker, the term "night and day" doesn't do justice to the actual difference. I simply can't imagine returning to wire rope. By myself I can unspool 75' of rope on the ground, haul the chokers, hooks and rope up a steep hill, set the chokers and then go back and winch logs in. No way that could be done with wire rope. I'd have to have someone run the winch and I'd be worn out after a couple turns. You won't believe the productivity difference if you're running out beyond thirty feet regularly.

What's cool is when I do finally wear out the working end of the rope I can purchase another 20' of rope and splice it in. At the end of the season I'll throw the whole rope in the washer, and get the grit out of it, air dry it, and have a nice rope for next year.

Just make sure you choose the right kind of termination to gather up you choker hooks. What I have is an eye in the end of the rope that holds about a 4" hard metal ring. The choker hooks (3 of them) slide down the rope to rest on that. You need to make sure that the rope itself doesn't bear the brunt of the chocker hooks.

 

[moray]

... It'd call it a friction heat plus overload failure.

...And now for the cool part. Despite never having done so before, by following the instructions we were able to repair the rope in about an hour, losing about 4 feet of rope in the break and repair, and then we put some massive loads on it with no problem. The repair seems just as strong as the original rope.

Very interesting. Did you see any signs of melting at the point of rupture? It seems very likely that is what happened. A sharp bend, a lot of tension, and moving rope add up to heat. A subtle point is that big ropes aren't much better than little ones in this regard. If my little 3/16" rope will start to melt from some combination of bend radius, tension, and rate of pull, your big guy would do only slightly better, and only because the extra surface area of the bigger rope around the bend radius reduces the pressure there.

Can you post us some pictures of your splice repair? And your fid? I would love to see them.

 

[Philobite]

Very interesting. Did you see any signs of melting at the point of rupture? It seems very likely that is what happened. A sharp bend, a lot of tension, and moving rope add up to heat.

It did seem that there was some apparent melting. The side of the rope got a bit shiny for several inches and the rope sort of thinned down. The damaged area was about a foot long.

I'll try to get some pics of the splice, but we followed these instructions (pdf). Essentially you narrow the tips of both ends, put the end in the fid, then use the fid to burrow up the center of the opposite rope for a few feet (think of a snake swallowing another snake), then do the same for the other. Then you cross-stitch a bit with some smaller string.

 

[Philobite]

Update

Just an update:

We've skidded about 55,000 feet of redwood logs so far with the 5/8" Amsteel Blue and we are absolutely sold on it. My older brother sets chokers for me during June and July and he keeps raving about how the rope has changed things for us. In many cases I'll spool out line for him and he'll coil it in his hand, and then swing/throw the chucks and line, 30-50 feet (sometimes uphill) over the brush or up an embankment to where he's setting the chokers.

So far we've broken the line three times... with repairs completed in a an hour or less. Each time the rope behaved safely, and each time it was my fault. The rope is getting shorter from the repairs (by about 20' now), so I just ordered another 60' from Robert's Supply to splice in.

Wire rope? Never again.

 

[oldchuck]

I'm very interested in using the synthetic rope. Just ordered 250' of it today.

My question is how do you thread the stuff through a snatch block?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Philobite]

I'm very interested in using the synthetic rope. Just ordered 250' of it today.

My question is how do you thread the stuff through a snatch block?

Thanks in advance.

Sorry, I don't use snatch blocks. But you can have Samson (mfg) send you a very nice manual gratis on how to use AmSteel Blue in logging applications, which includes the info you're looking for. Click here.

 

[oldchuck]

Thank you, Philobite....