Cable Kink

[hillbillyfab]

You are correct unless you talk about mining. In underground mining, not so commonly anymore, they use a two or three drum winch called a "slusher". This is either air or electric powered and is used to pull a scraper back and forth to move ore in a workplace. Heavy wire rope is used to pull the scraper and often breaks or needs to be extended. This is done by forming a flemish eye in the end of one piece of cable then passing the end of the other cable through the 1st flemish eye and then making a 2nd flemish eye around the 1st cable. When put under tension by the slusher, the two eyes form an interlocking compact knot which can be pulled through the oversize (for the cable size) snatch blocks used to direct the scraper.

Years ago I remember an ironworker using a fabbed up rig to straighten wire rope slings when they got kinks in them. Haven't seen this done for years and it would be totally illegal to do so today. You need to not only discard a kinked or damaged sling, you should cut it to prevent it's reuse before scrapping it.

We still straighen them in the field with a "jig". Best way to describe it is there's 2 angles, turned heel to heel with a piece of flat bar bolted in between. 2 slots inline in the angles. Place chokers in the slots, pull the flat bar down on any and all A-holes and go from eye to eye.

[Cabbagehats]

Knots and splices are not allowed in wire rope used for overhead lifting. Knots are not allowed in any use for wire rope.

Alright, so I thought. Strange that splices are allowed anywhere at all. If one let go there's a lot of force in there. Or are they generally pretty safe?

[Cabbagehats]

If you need an eye in wire rope you can make a "molly hogan" but use opposing cable clamps to tie the tail and load sides together securely.
Mike

Good to know. We don't use cables at all where I work, just chains. I do very small scale logging when we have a project so we're only dealing with a few trees at a time. Chains are nice in that if you don't set them right they just come undone, they don't go sailing back at the operator.