Safety Blue blowout from 200 pound top

[Dadatwins]

I. Thou shalt honor thy rope as thou would thy life.
II. Thou shalt keep thy rope away from harmful spirits.
III. Thou shalt not consort with ropes that are unclean, lest thou suffer a fall from grace.
IV. Thou shalt elevate thy rope above the downtrodden.
V. Thou shalt know the path thy rope has traveled.
VI. Thou shalt be neither a borrower nor a lender of climbing line.
VII. Thou shalt not treat thy climbing line as a beast of burden.
VII. Thou shalt keepeth thy rope cool.
IX. Thou shalt not associate with the coarse or the abrasive.
X. If thy rope offends the, thou shalt cut it with a knife and cast it into the deepest pit.



LIVE by it.

And thank you Mr. Don Blair for the 10 rope commandments.

 

[darkstar]

i dunno sounds fishy ...yeah i smell fish :blob5: there has to be a more obvious reason ... so the manufacture really checked it out ....if so then this rope was severly shock loaded ....

 

[stehansen]

I had a bull rope break once. I was cutting down a peice of cottonwood, about 8" at the big end and about 20' long with no leaves on it and it swung around and hit the rope where it was coming down from the anchor point and just smashed it against the tree trunk and everything came crashing down, but luckily it had enough momenteum swinging sideways that it landed clear of a fence that was below it.

 

[treesurgeon]

one of the lackeys broke a rope one time by pulling a tree over with the truck before i finished making the back cut. i had three ropes on the tree. i always put on extras. it was a retired climbing rope and where it broke there was a small nick in one or two strands from past damage.

 

[Eagle1]

So....all the stories of rope breaks are from misuse or something. Still wondering why the blue failed at such a young age. The maker would love to have that rope to analize. But, I still think either massive shock or an un noticed cut.

I had a 3/4 three strand that never broke. This rope was only used to do all these crazy things but save my life. We pulled stumps, trees, cars etc. Almost never stored it proper. Still have it becuse there are no handsaw or chainsaw cuts in it.

 

[CoreyTMorine]

Laugh will you? You might be very surprised in the performance. Stable Braid 1/2". You should maybe have a 5/8 bull rope for lowering heavy stuff. Two bull ropes are your team.

Personally, I've never used 5/8. I've just most often in my career climbed on bull rope.

TM, i've tried climbing on doublebraid a few times, always my climbing knot (blakes hitch) has caused the outer braid to bunch up. I havent spent much time with that kind of rig, but it does have some distinct advantages that i'm interested in. so, how do you overcome the outer core bunching up?

 

[woodchux]

I've snapped a 5/8 arbrplex rope a couple times , jerking 1000 lb + logs out of a canyon.

 

[notahacker]

I sometimes use a Munter Hitch while rigging. Anyone else use that while lowering lighter stuff? I use it for improvised situations only. It is not my first choice to lower limbs.

I once made a Clove hitch (intending it to be a Munter hitch) while rigging. I watched the limb go no where and looked at my groundie like, "Hello down there. Are you going to let it run a little?" He shrugged his shoulders. I looked at the hitch and realized I made a stupid mistake. :Monkey:

Now, if that chunk of wood was heavy and there was a lot of slop in the system I could have snapped that line. Thankfully some one above was helping out for me. :angel:

 

[TheTreeSpyder]

The sling with 400# would be double loaded in the pulley support position. A sharp bend on the pin holdling the pulley; X the impact of a 400# load X 2 X marking ink/other line destruction X knot/splice strenght efficiency loss less no relief for running line could concieveably reduce support strength below needs i think.

Backhand hitches slid/ Muenters give a tight leveraged bight from the load, as well as grinding the rope fibers in opposite directions against each other.

200# top, single loaded, low impact on line; don't seem right.

 

[RedlineIt]

SCTreeCare,

Well let's face it, SOMETHING happened to that rope that made it fail. Not intending to be disbelieving or argumentative, but ropes don't become possessed by demons or go for a coffee break.

If it were my rope, I would by-pass the distributor and send this rope on to the manufacturer complete with the detailed history of this rope and the mode of failure. I would be insisting on a failure analysis by the manufacturer.

Could it be sabotage?! Do you have any disgruntled employees or ex-employees with access to your gear?

Or even a green or foolish employee, who simply may not know better than to borrow a rope to pull a car out of a ditch?

Because let's face it, SOMETHING happened to that rope. It may even have happened before you purchased it.

Allow me to restate it: This rope needs to go back to the manufacturer for analysis. Who knows, they may find a flaw they can trace down to a quality control oversight on the shop floor, and issue a recall. It might save someones life.


RedlineIt

 

[CoreyTMorine]

SCTree? hello, are you still there?

Well said redline. Sctree, are you still there? we want more info, we hunger for info here on the arboristsite. By the way, thanks for sharing your experience.

if you are still there, the questions that are most pressing;
exactly what type of rope? samson or newengland, and what model, blue streak, true blue, or safety blue. just describe the rope if unknown. but it is important.

also, what were you using for a brake? muenter hitch, fig 8, stub, or what. and where was the brake? sounded like it was right below the face cut, but i wasnt sure.

lastly (well last question in this post) in your second post you say that if the rope had been cut by a handsaw it would have been all ragged and tattered (misquote). Is it possible that you touched the rope with your handsaw while finishing the backcut? did you have to do alot of sawing to make the backcut (enough that your arm was getting pumped)?

hey, thanks for taking the time to share this info. i'm not trying to bust your chops here, i'm just really curious as to what happened and why.

 

[clearance]

Redline is right, get it tested by the manufacturer. I want to believe you and I do not disbelieve you because I find it very hard to believe. All I can add is that have seen 1/2 lines break when they were being used to pull over leaners with a boom truck. I pulled some big birch leaners over against the lean with a rope I didn't really want to climb on any more, with my pickup, through a block to change direction. I sucked it up real tight first with a tirfor cause I only had about 20 ft. to back up. Probably at least 2-3 thousand lbs., singing tight when I backed up the truck. There is a logical explanation here.

 

[darkstar]

battery acid would do the trick and go undetected

 

[SCTreeCare]

more info

sorry folks, haven't been around for a while. too busy working......

the brake used was under the pie and was just wrapped around a stub. real simple rigging. it was a small tree and a very small top. The rope was definately not singed or cut. Shock load was definately on the rope, but not enough to break a strong rope. safety blue new england 1/2 was the model and make.

I appreciate the comments about sending this rope straight to the manufacturer. Trouble is, when I turned in into the saw shop that sold it to me, the rope was not returned when the replacement rope was given to me. The distributor wanted to further check out the rope. The more I think of it now I am cautious to not believe he was destroying the evidence!

anyway I guess the takehome point is to pull that heavy ass bull rope up for everything..... and to watch your employees like hawks.?.?

 

[NickfromWI]

I bet the retailer gave you the replacement rope to shut you up and they promptly discarded the rope.

This, if true like you say it is, is very big. We have to trust our ropes 110%. The way you describe it, this rope shouldn't have broken. I'd like a more experience group of people to look at the rope..ie- the manufacturer. The retailer did what a retailer should do, replace a faulty product. But this isn't a vacuum cleaner. In this situation, faulty can equal death.

Can you find out more?

love
nick

 

[Bodean]

I use Safety Blue. It's one of the few that won't bunch up when you squish it together. I mean to say that if you push two ends together the rope does not bunch up, as in your tautline. Only time I 've broken a rope was taking a way too big top of a walnut with a 1/2 inch line. The problem was that the Ropero took like two wraps on the tree and not enough run. So it seized up and snapped in my face right at the block. The only time I've used a bucket incidently. Scares me to hear of a climb line breaking, especially the one I use. Oh yeah the top landed right behind the cab. Lucky I guess not to destroy hydraulic hoses. I love learning about tree stuff and equip here though.
D

 

[Dadatwins]

I am still not sure about the circumstances behind this rope failure, I have seen a few lines fail in the past 20+ years but most were punished beyond their life span or simply overloaded by pulling with a truck. To hear of a relativly new climbing line fail without warning or any outward signals is very disturbing. Equally disturbing is the vendor simply doing an exchange and no recall issued on similiar line. I appreciate the poster bringing this failure to my attention, but this whole story still seems to have some gray area in my opinion.

 

[NickfromWI]

Dada- exactly. They CAN'T just sweep this under the rug. This story, as is, is simply NOT believable.

For now I will consider it fiction until someone proves it otherwise.

love
nick