Warning: Don't do this

[cotaman]

http://www.winchsaver.com/  is what is on the market now.... just a large piece of poly urethane    ...... also keeps the cable tight on the drum with out having it hooked to a shackle 

[w squared]

Yes, very unfortunate and un-necessary what happened to the firefighter.  Even if they had taken out the smaller shackle, they may have avoided the incident.

What now has me thinking is doing snatch-block doubled-line pulls. The components are rated for *single* line pull, but most of them aren't rated for *double* line pull.    IE: the components from the snatch block to whatever it's attached to are getting twice the line pull on them, so for my 9000Lb winch, they should be rated for 18000Lb pull, 9Ton, not 4.5Ton!    We actually had a smaller tree saver holding the snatch block for a redirect snap on a single line pull earlier this year, but luckily everything just dropped.

Seems like more material for offroad winching needs to be created over and above the "Warn" manual that seems to be the main thing out there aside from older military manuals.  I don't recall either of them talking extensively about this.

I keep a 1 inch shackle in the bottom of my recovery bag for just that reason. A 3/4" or 7/8" shackle will work just fine for a re-direct...but it's a different matter when you're using a snatch block attached to a single anchor point for mechanical advantage.

[cotaman]

hence also carrying the big 1" shackle  for the snatch block.... all more smaller items are going to fail before that does