Tensionless hitch

[pdqdl]

Do you really put carabiners on your big chunks? If'n it be that "small", I guarantee I am putting a timber hitch on it...behind a half-hitch.

Unless it is a really short, fat chunk. Then it gets secured by a Stilson with a timber-hitch tie off so as to never slip out of the choker. (I don't quite trust the Stilson hitch published in Sherrills: that dinky 1/2 hitch on the tail tying it around the loaded line doesn't look as secure as my method. Probably a bit easier, though).

I have never broken a loopie, but I sure bent the side plates on a 7kN pulley, using it on a speedline. We were just playing with the speedline, though. Nothing would have happened had it failed entirely. I did learn to not put that much on the loopie.

 

[Pelorus]

Do you really put carabiners on your big chunks? /QUOTE] .

If negative blocking, then I usually use a half hitch w. a running bowline.
If lowering from an adjacent spar or tree (using it like a gin pole), then there is no / minimal shock loading.
In an earlier era ('80's) I used to use screw gate steel biners for rigging, and the sleeve of the gate would sometimes get mashed enough to make them inoperable. I'm using auto lock ISC steel biners for rigging that have been in service for at least 10-12 years (or more) with no issues whatsoever.
Biggest issue I have is when guidelines become dogma / absolutes or SOGs / SOPs that are written in stone. Necessary perhaps for novices and mandated for guys on a FD, but some common sense goes a long way.
As a for instance, I'll come down a spar (that's gonna be pulled over) on a fig. 8 attached to a rigging line. Lotta folks say that is a big no no; keep that rigging and climbing gear seperate. If you don't trust a rigging line to be able to support your weight, then this is a very sad world to be living in.

 

[pdqdl]

I agree completely, from top to bottom of your post. I was only thinking of big chunks and big shock loads.

I don't use 'biners much on big stuff because I fear my guys crunching them on the ground. But then, most all mine are aluminum.

Side note: almost every time I climb, I go up with a big stainless rescue-8 for a rigging device if I need it and to clip all my speedline stuff onto, yet I have never rappelled out of a tree on it. I just putter down nice and slow on my friction hitch; never burned a rope yet. I figure by the time I transfer all my connections over to the "8" I will have lost as much time as I would gain on a rapid descent, and I certainly won't have increased my safety at all. I think about it frequently for the "ease of use", but I like my security blanket with the hitch.

BTW: I think that mandate about keeping the rigging & climbing stuff separate is to make sure that you don't go shock loading and breaking your climbing equipment. If the rigging stuff isn't visually good enough to use for either purpose, it ought to be pitched anyway.

 

[tree MDS]

I tie my wraptor rope off by wrapping around the porty all the time. At first I felt a little weird about it, but it doesn't bother me now. It's nice like that because I can ride right up to within a foot of where the wraptor line goes over the highest limb. Otherwise you gotta leave a little unused rope so the guy on the ground can untie the bowlin.

 

[Pelorus]

Oak TD last week.