Socketing wire rope

I had a cable pull out of two clamps. They say that three is enough.

You can try to do a FLemish Eye type of termination. (braid rope on itself).

The metal to use for potting is zinc.

i

For pulling people out or rescue situations, I'd use a commercially produced, rated, tagged and traceable sling.

Molly splice then sieze the ends with friction tape.

I have seen and used a lot of Crosby clamps in my life. I can say that they are only good if you are NOTreally going to pull on something HARD. In diving school, they showed us the poorboy eye splice. Actually it is the Flemish type, but you wind the two ends around each other once you wind it as far as you can, and it runs into the running end. Then, you clamp it onto the running end. They said if you ever worked for a company that used those, look for another company. I did not heed that advice. I saw a lot of them fail, and luckily no one was hurt. I knew never to trust one for any heavy lifting, and get the hell out of the way if anyone was really pulling on one. I never used one on a crane lift, we had factory socketed slings, but they were use all over the rig for lots of things. They way they finish that off with a crimp may do for my needs. I hate unlaying wire rope and making a backsplice. I have no problem with regular rope, but my hands and wrists are not up to wire rope any more, and I take coumadin now, and bleed with a change in barometric pressure. I think I'll just try two crimps on it with a thimble, and always use a doubler pulley. I may just bite the bullet and go buy a 50 footer of 3/16" with sockets, or put an ad on Craigslist.

Steve

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Hey Steve,

"Socketing" a wire rope is one of a few methods to leave the cable "straight", and not forming a loop or eye. A common method of a few years back was to feed the cable through/into an inverted female cone, spread open and double the end back into a "rose" and pull it tight into the cone, then sieze it in place with babbitt. It is more commonly done now using a flattened female cone and a wedge, seized with a single cable clamp like a Crosby.

A method more suitable to you might be, especially with smaller cable like aircraft cable, say up to 3/8", is to swedge a chosen end on, usually with a Nico-press. Nice part about that is that there are three or four common style ends that you then have options with as to how to make use of the cable for loading.

There are 4 or 5 pages of "ends" here:

or any marine place. Pretty sure there is a West Marine store in LV.

Take care.

Brian Lawson, Bothwell, Ontario.

Look for "Spelter Sockets". Spelter is zinc, like pennies or lead-free wheel weights.

haven't found a local source that could tell me how to install them correctly, including West Marine.

I use webbing tow straps instead, as they cause less damage to hands, vehicles and tree trunks. In mud season I add 100' of 1/2" rope and a snatch block to the logging rig:

have a winch for it but every hard use has cost me a new battery.

jsw

PrecisionmachinisT wrote in rec.crafts.metalworking on Fri, 11 Feb 2011 20:03:34 -0800:

better results IMHO:

Have you considered running another battery in parallel with it for winching purposes, Jim?

-- Remember, in an emergency, dial 1911.

Thanks.

Another thing...use of a somewhat largish hoop diameter decreases the likelyhood of its coming uraveled.

The tractor already has the largest one it can hold and the trailer is too full of loose metal tools plus maybe half a ton of wood to risk it. The lever chain hoist has enough pull, it's just slow. One of the batteries it damaged was a jump start pack, 18AH capacity when new,

"Brian Lawson" wrote

Nah. It's gone now. Or at least the one that I found in the phone book and then went to that address.

Steve

"Jim Wilkins" wrote

I use webbing tow straps instead, as they cause less damage to hands, vehicles and tree trunks. In mud season I add 100' of 1/2" rope and a snatch block to the logging rig:

have a winch for it but every hard use has cost me a new battery.

jsw

I'm mainly looking for a 50-100' length that I can use with a doubler pulley.

Steve

1/2" braided nylon rope works well for this, it doesn't twist the pulley and wind up like twisted rope and the stretch helps when you are alone alternately tensioning the line and driving forward.

A local Harbor-Freight-type discount store sells these snatch blocks for IIRC $12:

hardware store sold me the rope for considerably less than Tractor Supply charges. I store the rope, pulleys, shackles and short vehicle and tree slings in a Lowe's cloth shopping bag. The rope feeds out without tangling.

jsw

I picked up this 2-ton job for $5ish.

It sure is nice to get tangle-free rope.

I use my old backpacks for storing gear in the truck. They're really handy. When they look kinda shabby, I reuse them elsewhere, like the truck.

-- Remember, in an emergency, dial 1911.

I'd use Nicopress compression sleeves. Lockheed uses them to hoist nuclear missiles. They use two on each eye. I wouldn't risk a single one even though they're rated 100%. Some stuntman friends of mine had a single one pull out while using a jerk vest. Karl

Nico press fittings are not as strong as a swaged fitting unless you use the stainless steel fittings and use 2 of them. A rolling swage stainless fitting will hold the full rated load of the cable if correctly installed.

John