• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

I’m sure most on here will know this tip.

C

Cabinetman

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Ian
The easy way to use a ratchet strap.
It took me quite a while to find this out after struggling for years, and I was amazed the other day when a guy came to collect a car on his dollie that he didn’t know it either, and he was using ratchet straps all day every day.
Rather than putting the end through when the strap ratchet is open like this.
CE607E40-F450-468D-AD49-4B5B4EBC4A00.jpeg

Close the mechanism up and then slot it through then you can pull on the short end to tighten it up prior to using the ratchet, this also makes it easier to undo as there isn’t so much strap wound onto on the drum. Ian
C5E43585-A181-46A4-81BB-EE3F35A4B343.jpeg
 
Yes, a very useful tip that I've never really thought about, it was just how you do it. I can see why it might not be obvious though.

the other one people don't seem to know is that with all these small size straps, if you fold it back beyond 180 with the sprung gate to the left of your photo pulled back as you do it, it releases both gates by lifting a cam and you can freely pull the strap off the reel.
 
A very handy tip Ian, many thanks. I don’t use them very often but it’s well worth remembering as I find they can be ‘difficult’ to sort out once the pressure’s released.

Mods - can this be made into a bookmark/short cut for later ref? - Rob
 
Well I thought I had been the only one! It’s one of those stupid things that’s blindingly b... obvious when it’s shown to you, and as Novocaine said you open the block all the way to release the strap and that’s how they tend to stay for when you tie something up next time, so that’s usually how we start going wrong.
The other thing with doing it the "wrong" way it’s possible when you use the ratchet to pull strapping in from both sides and you end up with a whole heap on the drum in the centre which can make undoing it a pain. Ian
 
Woodbloke":24mkg4ml said:
A very handy tip Ian, many thanks. I don’t use them very often but it’s well worth remembering as I find they can be ‘difficult’ to sort out once the pressure’s released.

Mods - can this be made into a bookmark/short cut for later ref? - Rob
Click to expand...
Rob. It is already in the tips n tutorial board so easier to find

Bob
 
I've been using these small ratchet straps for years and never thought to start off with the ratchet closed.

I also didn't know about the open wide for double release thing either!

Thanks both :)
 
Ah, something I do actually know! :D

That does come from experience with ratchet strapping though in vans and on trailers, someone who doesn’t do it very often is going to find it confusing each time they pick one up.
 
While we are on the topic of tiedowns. Heres something for everyone to practice, for those times when a ratchet strap isnt available.

How-to-Tie-a-Truckers-Hitch.jpg
 
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