Sunday, 12 November 2017

Winching competition

Today saw the annual winching competition in the Turnditch Orchard. In the interest of fairness the teams are offered free choice of equipment and can select their winching tasks in the competition area.  This year the Management team were the clear winners of the event achieving six blackthorn stumps in the allotted time. 
Tirfor type winch

This year we tried out the Power Winch 2500. This pulls quite quickly, but the 2500 lbs pull was no match for the Blackthorn. We stalled the motor when attempting a straight pull of a stump and, in any event, we were worried the surface of the rope may melt on the winch capstan at full pull. We reverted to the tried and tested Tirfor type cable winch (1800Kg), which is slower but significantly greater pulling power.

We used a snatch block to double the pulling power of the winch. The other end of the cable was attached to a 130 mm post which had been driven into the ground, this in turn was backed up by our 16 Kg boat anchor. A new innovation was having the steel wheel rim to change the direction of pull chain to the tree stump. Instead of pulling horizontally, the wheel introduces an upward vector to help lift the root from the ground.

Steel wheel rim helps the pull
Our boat anchor helps the winching

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