Looking for a winch drum

[Mistress Sirena]

I would have it sand blasted

[gjordan]

In addition to checking the jaws, how old are your sheets? As line ages, it tends to get stiffer and wont wrap as tight around a drum. Different line has different friction amounts. Borrow a sheet from somewhere else and try it. Just a thought. _____Grant.

[Lepke]

In commercial use it's common to run several weld beads down and around the drum to increase grip.

[UNCIVILIZED]

Originally Posted by Lepke

In commercial use it's common to run several weld beads down and around the drum to increase grip.

That could be an interesting one to try. Have you done this on recreational winch drums? And when you go to ooch out a few inches of heavily loaded line off of the drum, to say, ease out the sheet a touch, does it chew up the lines much?

I'd imagine that after welding some DIY ribs onto the drums, you could smooth out the beads to your liking via hand sanding, & a Dremel, prior to reanodizing. Non?

I'd be curious to see pics of this if anyone has some. And yes, I know that some brands of winches come with ribs already built into their drums. But I'm curious to see the "aftermarket" version. As if you goof, & the drum or ribs are too abrasive, the price could be stiff if you were to destroy say, a pair of Warpspeed jib sheets.

[Jim Cate]

On the drums with which I'm familiar, such welding would almost surely distort the inner bearing races, destroying the drum's usefulness

I'd love to put some "Anderson-like" ribs on my excessively polished Barient 32 drums, but not by welding.

Jim

[TJ D]

Originally Posted by gjordan

In addition to checking the jaws, how old are your sheets? As line ages, it tends to get stiffer and wont wrap as tight around a drum. Different line has different friction amounts. Borrow a sheet from somewhere else and try it. Just a thought. _____Grant.

Thanks, Grant. That's not it-it does it with the old lines and also a brand new halyard. I'm using this winch for both halyards and reefing lines, and it's the same with all of them.

[UNCIVILIZED]

Good point Jim.

OP, as a temporary, or intermediate fix, you could treat the drums much like decks with worn nonskid. Prep (perhaps including an etch of the working part of the drum), prime, paint with flattened LPU, or Epoxy paint. Sprinkle a mild nonskid agent onto the paint while wet, & then add a couple more coats of paint overtop of this.
Cheap experiment, & at worst you wind up stripping the drums with a paint remover if it doesn't work, or is to aggressive on the lines.

[Jim Cate]

Originally Posted by UNCIVILIZED

Good point Jim.

OP, as a temporary, or intermediate fix, you could treat the drums much like decks with worn nonskid. Prep (perhaps including an etch of the working part of the drum), prime, paint with flattened LPU, or Epoxy paint. Sprinkle a mild nonskid agent onto the paint while wet, & then add a couple more coats of paint overtop of this.
Cheap experiment, & at worst you wind up stripping the drums with a paint remover if it doesn't work, or is to aggressive on the lines.

Unciv, that sounds like a really bad idea to me! On the drum of a winch, you want high friction circumfrentially and low friction axially, so the turns can ride up the drum as it turns. Your grit laden paint has equal friction in both planes, and will quickly destroy your lines.

Jim

[UNCIVILIZED]

Originally Posted by Jim Cate

Unciv, that sounds like a really bad idea to me! On the drum of a winch, you want high friction circumfrentially and low friction axially, so the turns can ride up the drum as it turns. Your grit laden paint has equal friction in both planes, and will quickly destroy your lines.

Jim

So if you were to apply swaths of nonskid in a vertical or spiral pattern on the drum, would the same still apply? And how does this principle work on winch drums which have omnidirectional texturizing? As some winches certainly appear to.

I imagine that some of how well a type & pattern of texturizing works, without tearing up the rope, has to do with the lubricity of the base metal/drum surface. But I'd say that texturized aluminum seems much more coarse than say chrome drums with cut checkering. And then there are exotic material winch drums; carbon fiber, & even more proprietary materials. That must be an interesting engineering excercise building them.

[Jim Cate]

Originally Posted by UNCIVILIZED

So if you were to apply swaths of nonskid in a vertical or spiral pattern on the drum, would the same still apply? And how does this principle work on winch drums which have omnidirectional texturizing? As some winches certainly appear to.

I imagine that some of how well a type & pattern of texturizing works, without tearing up the rope, has to do with the lubricity of the base metal/drum surface. But I'd say that texturized aluminum seems much more coarse than say chrome drums with cut checkering. And then there are exotic material winch drums; carbon fiber, & even more proprietary materials. That must be an interesting engineering excercise building them.

All one has to do is look at Anderson winches. Highly polished, slippery s/s drums with vertical ribs. They work with fewer wraps than any other winches that I've ever used... and I'm not quite sure why! But minimizing vertical friction while maximizing circumfrential friction seems a likely factor.

I think that it is kinda intuitive that "grit" on the drum will be harmful to the lines wrapped around it. Ideally there is zero slippage along the axis of the line as it wraps around the drum, but it must slide upwards under heavy load, and thus wear from a gritty surface must be present.

There are plenty of examples of knurled and sandblasted drum surfaces, and I'm not sure if any studies of wear vs successful gripping have been made.. perhaps inhouse for their own use, but I've used Andersons and many other winches and so far there is no doubt in my mind which is best. I know that my highly polished chrome Barients (curse that plating shop!) don't work well, and that scoring the surface of the drum woth vertical passes with 36 grit helps with the operation.

Meanwhile, I hope the OP can find a useful remedy to his slippery drums!

Jim