Winches

[OLDBULL8]

As far as I am concerned and OSHA too, that episode did more harm for worker safety than anything else did. I have worked around hydraulic winches for the last 15 years and have a healthy fear of what they can do to someone who's not careful.
I found two excerpts to the mythbusters episode and this one had the aftermath whereas mythbusters cut it short.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRKN8DCYyrE&NR=1

Today in Cincinnati a woman had her arm severed by what they said was a wire rope. She was with a group, so they said, towing a car to the junk yard. They didn't say how it happened. They saved the arm in ice, she had it sewed back on at the hospital.

 

[towtruckdave]

Today in Cincinnati a woman had her arm severed by what they said was a wire rope. She was with a group, so they said, towing a car to the junk yard. They didn't say how it happened. They saved the arm in ice, she had it sewed back on at the hospital.

How can people deny this?

Everyone who has been in the towing business a while has seen what a snapped winch line can do.

If the wire ropes breaks in the right place, it definitely can kill you. This is not legend or theory.

 

[93turbo_animal]

the woman got her arm caught in the cable between the cars and one of the cars moved and it cut her arm off the cable did not snap sorry

 

[BigRigTech]

Here's one for you....My grandfather and uncle were fisherman and boat builders when I was growing up. They used to build them in the shed behind Grandad's house and then tow them about 500ft down the dirt driveway to the launch at the family wharf. I remember when they built the original "Mary Teresa" (named after my great-grandmother and grandmother)....35ft wooden cape islander, 12ft beam...Fine looking boat....Eugene was towing the boat with his 79 Ford tandem dump truck (3208 Cat I believe) down to put her in the drink using some chain and cable....Right as the boat passed my grandad's front deck the cable broke off at the boat cradle....It whipped around and cut the 4x4 post that held up the deck corner clean off.........Like it was cut with a saw....I can only imagine what that would have done to human flesh....I was about 6 or 7 years old and standing "way back"...Grandad's orders.

Having fished for a few years I have seen first hand the un-real strain the ocean can put on fishing gear and what can happen when **** breaks or doesn't....Scarey stuff to a novice who's never been on the water before....Just my 2 cents for what it's worth, jacket-shirt or nothing I always hate winching stuff - period.

 

[93turbo_animal]

You could be on to something here Big Rig as it sounds like since it broke off the boat craddle the other end was still hooked to the truck so when it wrapped around the post the truck pulled it in two maybe. And maybe this is where the confusion lies as when stuff breaks the rest wraps around stuff and things get pulled apart as aposed to cut in two I don't know. I do know when that mythbusters episode aired I was sure at the begining that the cables would do some serious cutting. I know I've heard that the crack of a whip is caused by it breaking the sound barrier so I wonder how fast the cables on mythbusters was moving when they broke I can't remember if they calculated that.

Any how winching is dangerous and you should always take precautions to stay safe sorry to get the thread so disrailed just wanted to give towcat some grief but hydro is the way to go if your gonna be pulling logs all day but if your gonna pull one then cut it up and pull another and cut and after 4 or 5 you call it a day a decent electric one should be allright

 

[OLDBULL8]

The story in the Delphos Herald said the wire rope broke and cut the womans arm off, just repeating what the paper said. Must be a different story in your paper.

 

[fields_mj]

The story in the Delphos Herald said the wire rope broke and cut the womans arm off, just repeating what the paper said. Must be a different story in your paper.

We all know how trustworth and reliable the media is


How a cable behaves when it breaks depends on a lot of things. One of the biggest things is did the cable take a permanent set before it broke. Imagine you have a piece of bailing wire in a vice. You can deflect the end of the wire and it will "spring back" to its original position. However, if you deflect the wire past a certain point, it takes a permanent bend. It will flex back a little, but not much. This is a transverse load, but the same criteria applies when you put the wire in tension. The difference is that the wire is much harder to stretch than it is to bend. Same thing applies to a cable. It will stretch just like a rubber band does, but the amount of stretch is very little. Even still, that is stored up or potential energy. If the cable has uniform strength, and is properly used, then it will yield (bend) before it breaks. At this point the cable has permanently stretched which drastically lowers the amount of potential engergy that was stored in teh cable. So, when it breaks, so long as the load that was on it stops (like a truck in the mud would do) then the cable SHOULDN'T do much. Now this would all be an ideal situation, BUT if the cable has a weak spot in it, or is loaded in such a way that one point in the cable is seeing a lot more stress than the rest of the cable (like going around a sheive in a block) then that's a completely different story. Now, that section of the cable will break BEFORE the cable has yealed, thus it has A LOT more potential energy, and once that cable snaps, all of that potential energy becomes kinetic energy. At that point, at the very least someone will need clean underware.

Just my 2 bits,
Mark

 

[93turbo_animal]

The story in the Delphos Herald said the wire rope broke and cut the womans arm off, just repeating what the paper said. Must be a different story in your paper.

Yeah the story has changed or it was a different accident ( I searched for the story online) the original story I read said she got her arm caught in the cable and one of the cars moved and now I'm getting that they were using a rope and ran it thru the windows of the van and it ripped her arm off. Ropes and straps are way more dangerous the cables because of the stretch and recoil which can turn them into giant sling shots

 

[oldmisterbill]

This has turned out to be an interesting post. One thing I learned is that I need to learn to improve my search skills to find better deals.
I still will be very untrusting of cables because of a first hans eperience I had while working for a crane service in Massachusetts a long time back. Yes Aric you are definatly right a "snatch strap" (one that stretches -then uses the recoil to pull a stuck vehicle out) works great but sure are dangerous. I had one in each snow plow & sometimes hooked a couple together to get a badly stuck truck out - they work wonders-but can in my opinion be a deadly trap.