friction hitches

[Greg]

Sergio,
I just re-read your post about how you use your frict hitch attached to your harness via a loop of webbing, and then use the Biner as a kind of handle for advancing the knot. That sounds like a good idea, do you use a daisy chain? If not how do you adj the size of your webbing loop, or do you just stick with one size? or do you not use a loop and just tie knots with the webbing?
I want to go play with that
Greg

 

[treeclimber165]

Originally posted by Greg
Sergio,
I just re-read your post about how you use your frict hitch attached to your harness via a loop of webbing, and then use the Biner as a kind of handle for advancing the knot. That sounds like a good idea, do you use a daisy chain? If not how do you adj the size of your webbing loop, or do you just stick with one size? or do you not use a loop and just tie knots with the webbing?
I want to go play with that
Greg

Greg, you can figure out what size strap will work by experimenting with a short piece of rope, double fishermans at both ends. Or an old split-tail rope.

 

[TREETX]

Still learning.

I have a rope set up in a huge oak whose base is not 3 feet from this computer. I go out there a few times every evening and footlock. Great practice and footlocking uses a lot of new muscles as well.

What I have learned. The slowest footlocker is faster than the fastest air humper. There is a bit of a pucker factor to get over with footlocking. Once you get over that, you don't waste so much energy being tense.

The rope has come in handy with trying new hitches. I have found that is not really something you can do on the job. Because work time is where you use "old trusty". Play time is where you experiment.

 

[Acer]

Originally posted by treeclimber165

Acer, a tender pulley is practically required for body thrusting. If you make a small prusik loop out of a bootlace or something, you can clip the pulley on the standing side of your lifeline. With the prusik loop, you can adjust it up or down. When body thrusting (air humping), I slide mine as far up as it will go and it keeps my friction hitch up out of my way. I can concentrate on pulling myself up and never touch my hitch.

I know what you mean. I tried something like that with the old blake's hitch, but it locked up half the time. The v.t just doesn't seem to do that. I tried putting a loop in the standing part of the rope with an alpine butterfly, and clipped the vt/tender pulley/carabiner to that. It does speed things up, you never have to touch the hitch, just thrust. However, there must be a quicker way than tying an alpine butterfly all the time, so I'll have to do a few trials as you suggest.

I don't know that many people over here who footlock. I've never seen anyone who's any good, barring climbing competitions, but it does look good when done properly. I need to put in a lot of practice. The rope always seems to slip through my boots, and by the time I get a good grip with my feet, I've put weight on the hitch and jammed it. I wonder if you can use the vt as your footlocking hitch? Footlocking's fine if you can set a line high and you've got a straight run. Most trees I'm in tend to be too crowded and snaggy for the throwline. We tend to just throw the climbing rope over the first branch we can and wade in. That's why not many people I've met can footlock - not much incentive to practice. Having said that, I might have to have another go next time I get a day off, cos it's another tool in the kitbag...

 

[treeclimber165]

Acer,
Rather than tying a knot in the standing part of your lifeline, I was suggesting making a 6" loop out of throwline or an old bootlace. Take the 6" loop of small line and use it to make a prusik hitch on the standing side of the lifeline. Attach the tender pulley to this loop using a small clip. You can slide it up or down on the standing side of your lifeline to adjust the height of the tender pulley.

 

[budroe69moni]

can some post a picture of the distal hitch?????
it's not in the tree climbers companion and i can't
find my sherrill catalog.
thanks in advance!!!
budroe

 

[hillbilly]

Have you been to this site Budroe?
They have loads of nice pictures of friction hitches:
http://community-2.webtv.net/acutabovetree/RopesSplicingKnots/

/ hillillybilly

 

[treeclimber165]

The Distal, Schwabisch and French Prusik are shown on page 18 in the Sherrill catalog, when you find it.

Thanks for the Ultra Tech, JPS. It's a little short, only 24" with double fishermans knots at the ends, but it is good enough for me to use. I really like how the UT handles, but I'm not used to such a small diameter hitch rope. I need to whip the ends since it won't melt. Can I use SpiderWire 60 lb. test fishing line to whip the ends?

 

[Tim Gardner]

Brian,

I dipped the ends of my Tech Cord in Star Brite Liquid Electrical Tape and it has worked great. I think 3M also puts out liquid tape. Boat Shops and stores like HD or Lowe's sell it.

 

[treeclimber165]

I was going to try that, Tim. But when I dug out my old can of Star Brite liquid electrical tape, it had hardened because I didn't tighten the lid well last time. I ended up whipping the ends with the SpiderWire. We'll see how it holds up, but it looks fine. Gotta hit Discount Auto Parts to pick up some more Star Brite. I think it's about $3

 

[Kevin]

can some post a picture of the distal hitch?????

There are other variations of this hitch.
I use the 3 over 2.

 

[Tom Dunlap]

Kevin,

Where did that illustration of the Distel come from?

It should be noted that the Distel will handle differently depending on which side of the crossover the eyes are clipped to the biner. If the eyes wrap towards or behind the crossovers, there will be different amounts of friction. See what works for you.

Tom

 

[treeclimber165]

Tom,
I believe that picture Kevin posted is identical to the pic on page 18 in the Sherrill catalog.

Along with what you said, I use the Distal but I clip it backwards from the way shown- so the crossover is facing me.

 

[Ghivelder]

Greg,
I just use a fixed webbing like this:

Determining the right lengh is easy: it should be the furthest away from you as possible, but you must still be able to touch the top of the hitch in order to descend.
There was much talk on the forum about “adjustable bridges” and someone said that instead of an adjustable bridge, he had a piece of tape hanging from the central ring so that he could change the hitch from a close to far position. I thought that was a good idea since in fact we don’t need the in-between positions.
Personally, I came to this set-up for different reasons: because of a problem on my right shoulder I much prefer (and it’s in fact easier) to pull than to push. When I use a blake, I’ll never add a micro-pulley because it gets hard on my shoulder. I also think that the main characteristic of the blake is the way it stays dressed and the bulk that makes it so nice to advance by hand – not a good knot for slack tendind with a micro-pulley. Advance hitches are a whole different matter: they don’t even make sense without a micro-pulley. But still, I prefer not to push…What to do? I realized that using a pulley like Petzl’s fixe (with fixed plates) the rope goes through frictionless and the plates will advance the hitch like an ascender by just moving up the carabiner. I’m really happy with this set-up: when you body-thrust the left hand stays all the time on the binner using it as a handle and the right hand can grab the running end of the rope at the same height, just bellow the pulley. That distributes the force equally on both arms. The only shortcoming of the system is that obviously one must always use both hands, but in particular situations, the problem can be easily solved by just switching the binner from the webbing to the central ring.
Try it, and let me know what you think…

Sergio

 

[Ghivelder]

To make it work smooth, it's important to tie the hitch with very short legs.

Sergio

 

[Stumper]

RB touts the V.tresse all the time so I played with one a little today. Seems like a great hitch other than having that ugly 'knot falling apart look'. Someone (JPS I think) has mention a potential for hitch failure on a "bounce" with this hitch. Could you please elaborate? I don't want to adopt a hitch that will "let me down".

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

That was just an FYI post. There was a report of a study where they loaded variouse hitches in different ways.

the tress hitches were shown to unlock and run when dynamicly loaded enough to bounce up.

This was under labratory conditions, with new ropes.

I have seen no reports of this occuring in the feild.

I would not want to experiment either.

That all said, I do not know how often we climb in a manner that would cause such a loading. I do climb above my TIP, but usualy am maintaining good 3 poit contact the flip in. Rarely do I have a droop (or candycane and tom puts it) of rope below my feet.

 

[TheTreeSpyder]

i prefer a 3/1distel in 3 strand, though on my new skinnier Sherrill Yellow Jacket(#27544), i have been playing with a 4/1 lacing. i prefer the legs to come out directly to the hitchpoint, not back and around as previously pictured. When i engage my tender, i like no slack, total push under the friction hitch.

Pictured is my solution that i come down to after a while of addressing the issues of extending the reach, thereby the length per pull, for knot tending in situations where a lot of travel is desired and the efficiency of longer pulls comes to be the high point. Other things i have tried are to put a sliding prusik(or ropeman cam device) on the dead end of the host line to serve up the tender to the adjustable side of the host line (at friction hitch) as per the original (to me) Sherrill picture of long ago. Then on ISA someone had the idea of a prusik adjustable bridge as an option that i tried for a bit, but came back to this that i have pictured.

The pic is off some, to show the rubber boot better, in actual use i have it on the lower 'biner for stretching or contracting this length, thereby stretching or folding the sling's length. Even though i only open the 'biner for this while tied in seperately, that lil rubber bootie, about insures that the sling will not come off it's mount ('biner).

The express stitched sling from Sherrill is rated (conservitively?) at ~4950#(22kn); i use it very little extended, it recieves very little wear, and has my personal confidence.

 

[treeclimber165]

V.T.

I received my 20' of T-900 today from SailNet (Thanks, Dan for the link). I finally have a long enough piece of hitch rope to try the V.T. Tying it while sitting here at my desk, it looks even better than the Distal. I can't wait to try it tomorrow.

After years of keeping my right hand on my friction hitch all the time, I'm finally starting to get used to the idea that I don't have to mess with my hitch. Using a bridge for my tender pulley was becoming cumbersome whenever I needed to redirect my rope. I'm getting better about using the tender pulley on the same biner as my hitch, and simply pulling the tail of the rope out to advance my hitch. Placing my hand on my hitch is no longer necessary. This is a lot easier than my old method, especially when limbwalking.

Frigging amazing that I've gone from a tautline hitch to split-tail (one day) to distal to V.T. in a single month. I've spent more on gear this month than the last 3 years, and I still want more.

 

[rborist1]

:Eye: