What webbing for tree straps?

[dragon383]

Another member of HF had me make up some custom straps that were his idea and I thought was a pretty good one.
He had me stitch an 8'L piece of 1" to a 5'L piece of 2" for around the tree.
Makes it nice because you have the tree protection but without the weight of carrying around a 15' piece of 2" strap.

I like this idea, and as soon as I get a few dollars.... you can make me up a set in the 4500 lb (camo color) class with the 8" lock and loads, black cinch buckles, and if ya have those oval biners in black too....


And I just noticed you dont have camo in that strength.... we may need to do the olive color instead (red thread)

[UncleClark]

I use Blue Water climb spec webbing. It's 1" wide rated 4,000 lbs. I have never noticed any tree damage using 1" webbing myself but I don't generally hang from pine trees.

[Tinstaafl]

Well, I made my tree straps. 7 1/2' end of loop to end of loop. The stitching isn't pretty, partly thanks to my wife's sewing machine jamming & tangling the thread frequently, and breaking needles etc. Mid high school in the late '70s was the last time I did anything much with a sewing machine, but for a 1st attempt they're acceptable.

I mostly did 2" loops (one is a 3-4" loop), with the loop's webbing width narrowed by folding the webbing's edges longitudinally and tight zigzag stitching across the narrowed portion where the edges meet. Then another 2" section leading from the narrowed section to allow the webbing to widen to it's unfolded width. From there I experimented a bit with stitch patterns to join the webbing and make the loop. I used a 3" length of stitched area, with the stitching consisting of about a dozen closely spaced rows along the length + 2 double stitched box patterns + (on the last couple) tight zigzags for the crosswise ends & middle of the boxes. I figured that combining the 3 main webbing join stitch patterns I'd compensate for my poor technique.

Don't have a pic I can upload but something like this:

.... |Z|
.... |Z|
.... |Z|
../....... \
/........... \
ZZZZZZZZZ
|\\||||||//|
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|||\\||//|||
||||\\//||||
|||||X|||||
||||//\\||||
|||//||\\|||
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|//||||||\\|
ZZZZZZZZZ
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etc.

[hk2001]

You can also get away with just a series of bar tacks



Literally just fowards, reverse, forwards, reverse, move down an inch, repeat, again and again.

I do it 4 times, Dutch does his the same way but they're 4 or 5 bar tacks in the space of 2 inches.

Box stitches are overkill on tree straps supporting 2-300lb loads. If your talking 1,000's of pounds, maybe. But even then, I've repaired farm grade towing straps with series of bar tacks as show above, and watched them tow a few tons of tractor out of the mud. If the bar tacks will hold that load on a 6" strap, they'll hold my weight on a 2"

[Tinstaafl]

I wasn't entirely happy with the quality of stitch that I managed to get so belts & braces was my thought. A combination of 3 bar tacks, longitudinal stitches & 2 x box stitches makes me think that no matter where the quality is poor there'll be an alternative stitch to handle the stress.