Maquinas

Mors Kochanski taught me this one and gave his blessing to put it on the web. It is his modification of a Finnish windless In these pictures the logs have been shortened. In real life they should be as big as you can work with. The lever is practical up to about 8 ft. or 2.5m long. The longer the winch log the more stable this device is but too long makes it so stable you can not turn or flip it

Place the rope over the winch log and under the lever log. The lever is under the winch. Start tightening the rope by moving the lever pole like it is in the next frame.

Move the rope so that the winding is done on one side of the lever. Continue flipping the winch pole and winding with the lever pole until you have winched your load to where you want it.

If you are winching alone tie 2 keeper loops of cord around the lever and the rope so that you can flip. If you have a helper one of you flip and the other winch. Remember the winch is going to move toward the anchor at half the rate that the load does.

It’s especially useful when the objects are some distance apart, such as a pair of posts on a deck. As shown in the drawing, this simple technique requires only a rope and a stick.

Begin by making a loop of rope that is just tight enough to keep it from slipping down the posts. Now slip a stick through the loop somewhere near the midpoint between the posts, and start twisting. As the two sides of the loop twist together, the span of the rope’s loop shortens, and the posts are drawn together.

When the tension is sufficient, slide the stick almost all the way through the loop and let its long end catch on the deck to hold it steady. Now your posts are held in place while you install the railing, brackets, braces or whatever. One note of caution: If you plan to put a lot of tension on the loop, use a beefy stick. And don’t let go of that stick accidentally. It’ll spin around like a propeller, and it takes no prisoners.

You can apply this technique to many tasks.