How'd it go today?

Was going to put the new plastic cover on the polytunnel this weekend.
But it has been so windy that any attempt to hold on to that huge sheet of plastic would have to include a passport and some German currency in the back pocket as it was blowing from the North.
 
Helped Mike with a spruce takedown. I felled the spar with the world's worst felling cut. I had to cut the back twice. Wasn't a big deal with the little spar, but I'd have been in some trouble with a real tree. Otherwise, it was a pretty fun day. My new ms170 is still smokey as shit, and oil is still coming out of the muffler. I can't imagine how rich they mixed the fuel for that to still be going on. I guess the crankcase is full of oil? I have at least four tanks of my mix in it at this point.
 
Took down/climbed my first excurrent tree today (excluding an eastern red cedar which was just a notch and drop). Twas a Norway spruce. The sap was horrendous. It was not really a challenge either. I don’t know if I’d like tree work as much if it were all just sappy poles. I suppose the height of the trees out on the west coast would provide interest. John came and helped/hung out. Very nice. Then we rigged a long beech limb down from over a shed.

Upon arriving home, the neighbor said he wanted his (spruce, I believe) tree removed. I said I’m already sappy so let’s go!! I made side/sap cuts during the top and spar drop and boy I’m glad. She pulled lots of sap wood on the felling cut.

Now for another Tecnu bath as the first tree had large poison Ivy vines throughout and I had short sleeves.
 

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Today I was inspired to come up with/create/develop/originate two (in addition to the two I already came up with the other day) exceptional and novel locked/inherently secure variants of the common bowline. These loop knots are easy to tie and the second version is more secure than the first version, with the first version already being equally as secure as a Bowline w/ a Yosemite finish. To be transparent, I haven't the capability for break testing anything and so my claims are speculation. However, when you have studied the topology of enough knots, and when you've experienced their behavior enough times during actual use, you develop a sixth sense for knot performance which is hardly an outlandish claim. I'm sure every seasoned climber in this forum has at least a piece of this sixth sense that I claim to have. My claims are derived from much knowledge and much real life, "hands on" work and should not be dismissed as mere pseudoscience. :thumb:

Here is the link to my thread, where I discuss this matter in greater detail...

Here is the direct link to the video I made which shows both tying methods...


 
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^^^
In all the years that I've done tree work I have never once thought to myself "I have a perfectly good knot for this situation but it is too simple. I need to make it more complicated so it takes the ground guy longer to untie it."

Also if I am close enough to the edge that the bend in the rope is at risk of causing rope failure then I'm stepping up to a larger rope.
 
if I am close enough to the edge that the bend in the rope is at risk of causing rope failure then I'm stepping up to a larger rope.
wouldnt believe how often im told I dont have a big enough bend radius negative rigging on a single ring, but the knots holding everything with a 1:1 radius is somehow ok?

food for thought
 
wouldnt believe how often im told I dont have a big enough bend radius negative rigging on a single ring, but the knots holding everything with a 1:1 radius is somehow ok?

food for thought

Interesting observation. Knots in climbing ropes, as a rule, will reduce strength by roughly 50%. For Dyneema, it goes as high as 70%. I wonder how much strength is lost using a ring how you describe. I would think it would be less, but maybe not.
 
Interesting observation. Knots in climbing ropes, as a rule, will reduce strength by roughly 50%. For Dyneema, it goes as high as 70%. I wonder how much strength is lost using a ring how you describe. I would think it would be less, but maybe not.
I think depending on the fiber 4:1 is recomended, rings are like a 3:1 depending on brand and size, ive heard up to 8:1 for rope to maintain its strength
ansi requires 5400# break strength of textiles in the combo you work them in, say a rope loses 50% SWL with an alpine butterfly, then technically you are required to use a 10800# MBS rope, atleast thats what I read a few years ago, these days I but a well known rope and use it, dont worry about those specifics, a 5400# capacity rope will hold me 130#s easy
 
Is that really the case? I assumed 24kn was specced to account for knots and wear. Straight 24kn is ridiculous for climbing.

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Arborist Climbing Ropes are required to have a minimum breaking strength of 5,400 lb (24 kN) when new, and should be no smaller than 1/2” (12.7mm) unless the employee has been trained in the use of smaller line (down to 7/16” / 11mm), and the line's working elongation should not exceed 7% at 540 lb load.


bottom of page.

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BTW, the Wraptor's back up for sale...

 
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Arborist Climbing Ropes are required to have a minimum breaking strength of 5,400 lb (24 kN) when new, and should be no smaller than 1/2” (12.7mm) unless the employee has been trained in the use of smaller line (down to 7/16” / 11mm), and the line's working elongation should not exceed 7% at 540 lb load.

Which arborist ropes on the market have that much stretch and, more importantly, does anyone actually use them? Wouldn't that be considered a dynamic rope? Wouldn't that mean that a rope with a minimum breaking strength of 5,400lbs would have *at least* 70% total elongation and roughly 7% elongation at 10% ABS (but actually more since it's "average" not "minimum)? Is that a typo? Even if this were a typo and they meant 5,400lb and forgot a zero, then your standard Drenaline (5,600lb MBS) at 1.4% elongation at 10% ABS would have twice as much stretch as they are claiming is the minimum requirement. Or am I doing the math wrong? Maximum elongation for dynamic ropes is usually around 40%.
 
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Is that really the case? I assumed 24kn was specced to account for knots and wear. Straight 24kn is ridiculous for climbing.

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bottom of page.

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BTW, the Wraptor's back up for sale...

hmm
yeah one of them things I mustve read a while back, thought it required any combo (knots included) to have atleast 24Kn MBS
 
If I'm reading you right, there's no law that says elongation has to be completely linear. You could theoretically have a line that elongates 7% @ 10%abs, but goes no further. For many reasons, that's not how it works, but it /could/. That's just a technical detail. Rock climbing lines have a lot more bounce, but I don't know what typical specs are. 7% would be miserable doing tree stuff. XTC 16strand is all the stretch I can take, and I only like that for mrs. I much prefer highly static lines.
 
They should add another metric on there which states the "Absolute Elongation," which would be a measurement of its full potential to be stretched (by how much) and at what weight or force it becomes fully elongated per however many feet. That would resolve this matter.

I reserve the right to find out from someone else that I was doing the math wrong earlier, rendering this moot.
 
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I'm not following you. The guidelines are ANSI's specs, not wesspur's. They're saying 100' line shouldn't increase beyond 107' with a 540# load.
 
@lxskllr I just deleted that message, not realizing you responded to it. I know they aren't Wesspurs, but what I meant was that I was using them in the same way that they were. I understand what I was doing wrong with the math. I was making the mistake of assuming that these metrics were constants, so that stretch at one amount would continue if that same amount were added to the original and so on and so forth. But as you aptly pointed out, stretch stops at some point and so the measurement is standalone. Makes sense. I still think it would be helpful to know at what point and what amount of force a, say, 100 foot sample stops stretching. But I guess this really isn't all that important considering it shouldn't be holding more than a person's weight on it at any point anyhow.

I'm pretty sure I just had a senior moment and I'm 34 haha I have no idea why I got so confused by that. I tend to overcomplicate everything.
 
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I assumed 24kn was specced to account for knots and wear. Straight 24kn is ridiculous for climbing.
It may look overkill for tree climbing, but it's made to catch a fall too. The load rises very quickly even with a very small fall. The tree ropes are way less stretchy than those for the rock climbing, but they meet the same limit, as the body can't take more than 6kN without being severely damaged. No need for more in the expected conditions, still, the ropes have to go near this limit. Multiply it by a security factor and it comes in the ballpark of the norm's value. A knot and some wear lower drastically your security factor. Hopefully not too much. But if you make a rescue for example, that's straight twice the common load, so the margin becomes even thinner.
The ropes don't stop stretching with the increasing load, until they break. Just the curve isn't linear past a certain point. The working territory of said ropes should stay well within the limit of the true elasticity to be able to recover from the stretching and be used again safely.
 
Here's a link to an ancient thread, largely about now mostly obsolete SRT techniques and gear. But we got into rope stretch and elongation at breaking strengths, and definitions of static, semi-static, and dynamic lines.

 
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Get in there and kill a wild boar with a knife, maybe a spear, then you good.

I took my youngest daughter hog hunting when she was about 10 years old. She had a new knife and wanted to kill a hog with it. Well, we caught a little one for her but when she saw how cute it looked, she couldn't kill it.
 
Well! That did it. Came with the truck. Chipper on a nasty road. 8k wins!
Custy saw me on the side of the road and towed it to my staging point. Less than a mile. Gotta love nice folks.View attachment 129467
Looks like the hitch was added on after the fact. Is there a reason you can't just cut it off and use the original frame mounted hitch behind it? Or is it tucked up too far under the bed?
 
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