How Can You Spool a Winch Evenly?

Last Updated on June 28, 2021

Winches are used in every part of your life. From carrying them to a road trip or a campfire party to lifting heavy objects or using them for industrial purposes, winches are necessary. However, mastering the art of getting a winch to spool evenly is challenging and requires lots of practice. Even with miserable first attempts, one has to learn it because it is not as if you can live without a winch for the rest of your life.

There are a very few easy steps to follow and a few precautions to keep in mind to get a winch to spool evenly, and you will be fine the next time you get to use the winch.

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Steps to Spool a Winch Evenly

No matter how easy it seems and sounds, getting a winch to spool evenly is not a job for a nonprofessional. It requires practice, persistence, and, obviously, technique. One doesn’t need to know spooling when the winches are used for construction or industrial purposes (unless you work there, in which case you receive full training). However, if you go out camping or on trips, you will most definitely need to know how to use a winch.

Follow these easy and descriptive steps to get a winch to spool evenly without breaking a sweat.

Step 1: The Full Length of Rope Should Be Spooled Out

Once you have mastered the art of spooling the winch, just spool only until the rope makes an uneven balance, but spooling the entire thing out provides a guarantee that you don’t have to redo the work and the winch will be spooled evenly.

Next, you will have to disconnect the lever of the clutch that is generally located beside the drum for initiating a mode that initiates free spooling. This privilege is available in modern winches only.

Step 2: Activate Winch

The modern winches mostly come with a remote controller. This not only reduces your work but also makes spooling extremely easy and convenient. After you have pulled out the complete rope off the winch drum, you can just plug the winch remote, which controls the actions while engaging the lever. This step prepares the winch and the rope to be spooled while ensuring the drum of the winch stays locked.

Step 3: Slowly Pull

This step is the final nail in the coffin, and it is advised that you take an assistant for this activity. It is complicated to manage the rope and ensure the spool is proper simultaneously. The mess can result in the winch being wrongly spooled or even create an accident as the winch rope is heavy, and the winch rotates automatically once you have turned on the remote control.

Precautions to Be Taken

Spooling a winch is easy, but certain technicalities that an amateur or seldom users like us will not be aware of. Most of these are not essential and don’t create significant differences. However, there are a few points that one must keep in mind not just to be safe oneself but also to guarantee the winch’s longevity.

Wear Protective Gloves: One should never handle the winch line without taking proper measures like wearing thick protective gloves. Mostly if the wire is made of steel, it is impossible to spool it without wearing gloves.

Even with other kinds of cables, gloves give you a better grip on protecting your hands from damage and piercing. Although this seldom happens, in regrettable circumstances, the winch accidentally pulls on hands using them, and only strong gloves can protect you from such situations.

Winch Rope: The winch rope is most easily damaged among all other parts of a winch. Thus, you have to protect it at all costs from damage from usage or damage from weariness. The rope gets the most amount of exposure from all outside elements. You can always perform bench tests to check all the winch parts to see if it is correctly working.

Concentrate: Concentration is a must while spooling a winch. It doesn’t require skill, but it requires complete attention as the rope must be straight, and even a small crook can result in uneven spooling. It is also important to note whether the rope has been tightly spooled.

It should be as tight as it can be that it gives the best chances of the rope staying that way on the winch. Another crucial step to keep in mind is continually maintaining check and not letting the rope overlap the already spooled rope until the previous layer of rope covers the winch drum’s entire width. The covers also need to be even and tight for the next layer of rope to spool incorrectly.

Final Words

Using winches is not easy, but learning to use them is. Since nobody needs to spool regularly, you don’t necessarily have to learn the way by hurting (unless you want to) but can easily follow the steps every time you have to spool one.