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new (?) tarp tensioning system, no hardware, single handed
been lurking here for quite a while, and found some amazingly useful information which saved me a lot of trial and error, and helped me get right to thinking of something "new". the following is one such (albeit very small) thing.
this is from the "we don't need no hardware" series. i haven't seen anything similar anywhere, so perhaps worth sharing (took a bit of work to get it working nicely, but this is just the first prototype, so ideas for improving it are welcome).
TLDR; here's a short clip showing it at work
https://youtu.be/ge10v2VIx-I
the main goal is to have a setup which combines the convenience of (the better) hardware solutions, and the light weight and versatility of no hardware. at first glance one might say "why bother, just buy some hardware", but some of us like our knots, and such setup has some advantages (it's light, it can be done with any size or type of rope you have on hand (or prefer), on the spot/in the field, you don't need to order exotic hardware and wait for it, you don't get stranded if something brakes, and besides knots are cool). despite how simple it is, this works quite well based on my testing so far, to the point where it's hard to think of any remaining argument for using any hardware on the guylines (btw, if you can think of any, i'd like to know, it means i can improve something)
it does work:
Attachment 181093
Attachment 181092
this overview pic is of the "parrot corner", which i rigged like this in view of taking pics for you, so that you can see what's what (normally one would use the same line, but then it's hard to make out what's going on in a picture; the setup is not very fussy about line diameter etc, but more on that in a bit). basically, it's composed of: guyline itself (blue), friction hitch(grey), tending loop(green).
- the chosen guyline dictates the range of line to use for everything else; using the same line throughout is straighforward and works quite well, but for the firction hitch you can easily use something thinner.if it gets much thinner (aside from the obvious requirement to make sure it's strong enough), the firction hitch might need to be tied differently to reduce the amount of grab. in this case, the line of choice is type 1 (100) paracord (or microcord), it's about 2mm in diameter, and supposed to be 100kgf break strength (which is a bit too much, but i don't like to work with under 2mm line and knots)
- the tending loop is quite important to make this really nice, it needs to be short enough so that when pulling on the tail to tighten the guyline, the guyline in tension rests on the tending loop, and the friction hitch gets unlouded (pictured here, the offset between the tending loop and friction hitch is huge, much bigger than it needs to be, it is so it is very obvious in the video how it works; this also exagerates the sitback, which can be just a few mm if adjusted properly). i'll be experimenting with using a very short dyneema continuous loop as tending loop (for the low friction properties), we'll see how it holds up (dyneema has very low melting point, so usually wouldn't be used where there's motion under tension, i'll have to be tightening my guylines without much haste, and we'll see). the tending loops are not critical (so if they fail, everything can still work, it's just less conveninent: tightening would require two hands); the (green) tending loop featured here is some cheap pp line from the hardware store, i highly recommend against using pp for this (too much friction, weak, and terrible abrasion resistence).
- the friction hitch is a VT (valdotain tressee, or braided valdotain); while it might seem overkill, i found it is the perfect combination for this purpose. the only slight disadvantage is there's a bit of sitback (as you can see in the short video), but that's no problem for how i use the tarp. more compact friction hitches can be a lot more "precise", but they don't release as nicely as the VT, and thus induce additional drag when you want least. the other nice thing about the vt is that it allows for very smooth release and adjustment under tension (as shown)
in summary:
- simple: friction hitch, tending loop, guyline, and some magic
- no hardware, guyline is all that's needed, field replaceable, customizable to fit any tarp or line, no sewing required, it operates as conveniently as the best hardware friction locks out there, adjustment from under the tarp. setup once, then re-use it without having to tie/untie anything
- the anchor ends of the guyline are free so you can tie to whatever makes sense: stake, boulder, tree, dead enemy burried under the snow, live friend who skipped his turn cooking, you get the picture, whatever you find.
- disadvantages: a little bit of sitback (can be fixed by replacing the VT with a compact friction hitch, but at the cost of a bit more friction, matter of priorities i guess), not a good replacement for the linelocs in mass production (this is hand made, so it probably costs more in man hours than mass produced linelocs), so it's an "exclussive DIY" thing
next episode: UCR instead of friction hitch :P
if somebody finds it interesting and would like to try it, let me know if i can explain something in further detail
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nanok
