How to Use a Ratchet Strap - Tips and Tricks!

[Music] hi dirk farmer jay here from dirkfarmerj.com thanks for joining me on this fast-paced wamp through the world of the ratchet strap stick with me and i'll show you in just a few minutes four great things you need to know to successfully use these handy devices number one i'm going to show you how to correctly thread it and set it up so it'll work flawlessly number two i'm going to show you common strap down techniques that'll help you secure all those loads that you're going to be hauling in your trailer your truck number three i'll pass on to you some great viewer tips that have been sent into us by our viewers about the things they're doing to make these work harder and number four just in case you fouled one of these up and it's all wadded up i'm going to show you how to undo it and get back to work are you ready to go strap on your seat belt here we go [Music] hey dirt farmer jay here from dirtfarmerj.com we've got a lot to cover about this so let's get to work but before we get started can you do me a favor if you find this video to be helpful won't you like it and better yet subscribe to our channel and when you do ring the bell because that way you'll be notified approximately every friday of another great video episode that's coming out about product reviews shop skills homeowner skills maggie's kitchen and all sorts of things about the yard and the garden all right well let's get to work we've got a lot to cover so here you've got a standard type of ratchet strap and uh this is a medium duty or light duty strap that's commonly used for around the home uh and for you know rv vehicles and those kind of things that where you're trailering recreational vehicles and motorcycles that sort of thing these are not to be used in commercial settings but they're really handy for us home owner types well let's get to work the first thing you need to understand there's two parts and this end right here is the ratchet component now one of the things that really happens a lot is people don't know do we lay it out like that or like this is it like that or like this well there's a really easy way to remember this imagine that this is just your arm right so do you walk around when you reach for something do you reach like that or do you reach like that like this or do you just put your hand out well you do it like this right same thing with this you're gonna attach this to your attachment point you're gonna lay this open okay so let's have you come in a little closer and we'll set it up okay so we're just going to kind of do a mock-up setup here and as you can see i've laid this open the way i said with an arm like this and i've just attached it over here to give me something to pull against and we've done the same thing here now the first thing you need to do is make sure you don't have a twist so once you have this attached just work the strap through your hand just like that to keep it flat so there's no twist once you've got the end here this is how you set up the strap lift it and if that slot right there is in the wrong place or it's hard to get to just rotate this around like that until you can get it come from underneath the handle not over the top underneath feed through right there and when you do just push it up and pull through now notice there's no twist because we took it out of it when we're setting it up now just take this and go back home through the top you've come through the bottom through the slot back out and take out the slack the biggest problem people do in fouling this is leaving too much right here and then they start winding it up and they get a big wad that jams so here we're just going to take it like that it's very clean tug to get a nice tension on you don't have to yank we're going to let the strap do the work once you do that then you're just going to take this handle to kind of close it and then start rotating now notice what happens just in a few partial turns even with just a little bit i'm putting an unbelievable amount of pressure you can see how that's deflecting it's really doing it and look at here i'm starting to get this already with just subtle pressure so that is the first thing you're going to do right there now to secure the latch all you do you don't have to do anything just rotate it shut now it's ready to go well let's look at another common thing that happens right here people let that just flap around in the wind and depending where it is on the vehicle on the trailer whatever this can get really dangerous as a matter of fact i have a family member that had one of this trail out the side get to the drive shaft snap wrap up snap and then throw the hook back around and hit the back window of his truck while they're driving down the highway it sounded like a bomb went off don't do that it's dangerous so what do you do with all this well there's a lot of things but here is a lot of different techniques out there here's my favorite thing to do you're simply going to roll this up [Music] all right once you've got it to right here give yourself a little slack here's the magic you've got this right here give the slack reach through hold this and grab the strap from underneath and just pull it through like that okay let's do it again that's like this just take a little bit of that strap below push it up through create a loop and then roll that loop around everything and when you do and you pull that's what you get and that will not blow around it cannot come undone when it's time to undo it simply pull this loop again to get the slack going and reverse once you get it big enough put the loop back through and there you go you are ready to go how's that for cool all right now let's move to the next thing all right let's talk about how to undo this now it's it's secured but now it's time to undo the load uh and i've already undone my security roll here and i've got the tail ready to go when it comes time to undo one of these you're simply going to pull the handle the release handle right here all of them have something that is of this purpose so you're going to grab that pull it forward and then open this all the way up now when you did you could see that starting to move right there a little bit and alls we're going to do is open and there did you see it release that goes just like that that roll now i'm going to tighten it back up and show you something there you can see we've got tension on it uh an earlier video i had one of these it was pretty sticky and so it wasn't releasing and you saw me reach in and kind of grab that along with this several of you went uh uh uh um that's dangerous that thing let's go that's not what it's designed for the only place your fingers should be is up here and they're right so if i've got that intention watch as i flatten it out and watch that right there start to release see it move back and all of a sudden i've taken tension off of this i can literally start to move this back and by pulling it this way there it all let go all at one time now i can just pull that out and then i can stow these and i'll show you stowing these in just a little bit okay let's go to the next thing okay let's talk about common load number one where you've got something in the back of your truck or trailer let's suppose it's a stack of two by fours or whatever and you want to strap it down well there's a couple ways you can do that if you notice most your trucks uh and trailers all that have some kind of attachment point there's one there and one across the way and the other side of the bed and we'd simply use the hooks on the end and hook onto those go over the top thread it the way we showed you and do it that way if you're using sheet goods like what we're using right here i have a single piece of fiberboard masonite type of product here and i wanted to strap this down there's a couple ways one i can press it down if i've got a lot but that doesn't take a lot of the forces here i'm going to show you another technique in a moment but you can use your tailgate especially on these short bed trucks eight foots about two and a half inches past the down tailgate so you can't just have it hanging out and you want to use your tailgate so what you've done is or what i've done is run the strap around the underneath i'm going to hook these two together right here use them so they're opposing themselves and i'm going to come back to my own hook right here using the same technique we did before in back [Music] pull to tighten start your ratchet and you've got it down and then we can secure this if we need to if you can see there isn't much there so that is a quick down force thing okay so that is a real quick way you can do this however let's suppose you have a stack of lumber or it's kind of you're afraid you're going to go when you accelerate everything is going to come back on you then what do you do to stop it from going forward well here's a couple of great techniques that i'm going to show you this one is first just if you've got a short stack let's suppose you've got a stack of sheet goods about that tall or a single piece here's the here's the technique we secure it flat this way but we secure it so it's being forced against the front of the truck by using a large c clamp and you would tighten this to the sheet good if you've got something that you want to make sure that you don't mar it you can put a scrap block or something in there to stop it i put it to the center and then use a single strap going from the side there through the thread portion back to the other side of the truck and then cinching this forward and then this cannot come out okay we're done with this and this stops it from any lift that's especially handy on single sheets like this if you've got lots of sheet goods then you don't have to worry about this being bent forward but this all helps so this is a great way to do it now if you have a large stack here i want you to take a look at this picture real quick and see the straps that are coming underneath these two gentlemen uh we ran dirt farmer maggie and i saw them at the lowe's parking lot and what they were doing was so brilliant i asked if i could borrow their idea from them and pass it on to you and what they've done is a similar setup to this however two straps and when they go to load large amounts like this in their short bed utility truck then what they end up doing is starting a strap here crossing under and leaving the tail out and then starting another one the opposite way loading the vehicle then bringing the straps under and that one starts over there comes up underneath and then secures over there that one starts over there comes underneath and secures back or up over the top i'm sorry it's underneath and then over the top and then secures there and when you cinch those all down it secures them both ways it can't lift and it is keeping it in the back here those guys are brilliant and so i want to give credit where credit is due all right let's look at our next tip if you constantly use your truck to haul sheet goods and lumber like we do i got tired of trying to find my ratchet straps all the time so i set up a little rig back here of just having a ratchet strap attached semi-permanently on both sides ready to go to work at a moment's notice i picked up these little canvas bags on amazon and i can stuff the whole thing right inside of them and you'll see in a future episode i'm building a stop rack or a divider in the back here which will show that that'll actually get stowed on that so all the gears are ready to go well what i did here these have intensity to come off i've loosened this off because they're open hook instead of using the hook i used the the loop and using either a quick link a quick link like this where you hook it like this and then put it in to there i can now secure that and that is ready to go all the time or i can use an actual carabiner that is like this type where i can simply let's go ahead and take that off i can use the carabiner open the gate on it boom put that back here as well and now that is ready to go to work all the time so i have a set of these carabiners like this are ready to go now if you're going to use a carabiner use the real deal don't use these kind these are convenience ones for you know key fobs and keeping your goodies on the back of your backpack or whatever it might be but if you notice right on this it says not for climbing why well the load rating on this is only about 125 or 150 pounds and i'm telling you you can really exert some weight on this just on the ratchet strap uh pressure and then also um the working load itself on these the strongest two points there's that little bitty pin and that little bitty pen these are not what to use instead go up on amazon find the real deal this is a threaded one that stops that can open there but if i thread it forward it's locked the gate is locked and the back shaft or the spine here this d shape is set so that any load moves to in line closely to the spine and you'll see all of these are in kilonewton ratings 25 kilonewtons oh it's probably over 5 5500 pounds way north of two tons of weight that this can hold these are the real deal so uh gear up doesn't cost that much use the real thing may i throw in a free tip real quick no extra charge for this okay i want you to notice these two different ratchet straps now this one the center right here barrel is made of two curved bars so it's actually looks like an upside down smile and a frown versus notice this type two half bars flat what's the big difference well notice if you try to feed a thread a a web through that you're strapped through it on back here that as it enters that bar is not in the center but it tends to want to follow that curve and roll up and sometimes i'll end up especially as the end of these start to curl a little bit trying to work to get those through these are to be avoided they don't really work that well more and more i'm seeing have this flat bar again the keeper is not in the center but when you go to slide in even if there's a curl it forces it to go straight through look for this type avoid that type here's something else you need to know sharp edges and this is a moderate sharp edge are the mortal enemy of this strapping so anything you can do to soften the radius of where strap crosses product cargo anything that's sharp edge is to use something that softens the edge and these are little packing corners that show up in many products when you buy products online and if you put that down first and then strap over it you're really protecting the strap you can do little sections of this another approach is to simply fold up a shop rag wash cloth a towel some some people have actually got shipping corners that have got those radiuses you can get them from truck stops in their their uh truck driver supply area but anything you do to protect that strap is going to really give you longer life with the strap also don't leave these laying around out in the weather because sun will degrade them they'll get soft or get brittle so then then keep them stowed safely and they'll work a lot longer okay as promised i'm going to show you how to unfoul one of these and what i mean by that is when so much strap here is wound around the central hub that's jamming against all the elements here and you can't get the thing to release so we've learned to release you have to open it all the way up like this and when you do by tilting that up it lets go so that's the first thing make sure you're doing that that you're changing the angle of attack on that so that whole thing comes loose if that doesn't work and you now have this big old wad there that you can't unspool then let's go ahead and build a wad up here and we're going to show you how to undo it now how the first of all how does it happen it happens here's that prevention part if i leave way too much slack over on this side of it and i'm just going to count on the ratchet strap to use up all of that okay and then you know i'm not going to pull tight to begin with i'm just going to let it try to use up all that okay so let's see what happens when i do that we're going to start winding up over here okay i'm using up all that strap but i want you to notice something right here notice that i am winding back onto their both the tail and the load side right here at the same time onto this central hub and look how it grows really quickly and finally what happens is i get so much material on it that it runs out of space inside and i still haven't used it all up so then i think well i got to keep going here and then what happens is i'm telling you i'm already running resistance here i'm now getting some pressure but this thing is kind of all there's way too much material all over this hub here so don't start with that much now if you've got one like this and it doesn't want to let go then what you're going to have to do is literally start pushing material pushing this back in and then over cranking this as wide as you can get and start tugging on this and when you do see it there it start to release there we go tug on this not on that that gets on the outside of the roll and there we go now i'm okay all right now we've got it coming out and you're able to unfoul it i'm going to go ahead and do it again just to see now i'm at this point right here and it still doesn't want to let go so i'm just going to start manually pushing it until i can get the back strap to come back through and when i do what do you know i'm done and now i can undo it if this has been really really overextended the frames are bent this is all rusted you can try to put some wd-40 or some kind of lubricant on to let it go if it is just so wadded up and tightened that you can't get it loose friend it is time to invest another eight to fifteen dollars to buy a new set of four and there you have it there's some great tips and techniques how to make these little babies work really hard for you if you found this video to be helpful would you like it better yet subscribe ring the bell when you do so that you get notified approximately every friday of great videos like this that tell you how to be an excellent homeowner to put your hands on things just do it for yourself in the kitchen out in the shop in the yard and great product reviews until the next time this is dear farmer jay with dirtfarmerj.com [Music] foreign

Channel: DirtFarmerJay

Views: 1,177,221

Keywords: how to use a ratchet strap, using ratchet straps, ratchet strap, strap ratchet tie down straps, how to use ratchet strap, how to loosen a ratchet strap, ratchet strap tie downs, ratchet tie down straps, how to thread a ratchet strap, how to thread ratchet strap, how to release a ratchet strap, ratchet tie down, how to ratchet strap, ratchet strap how to, how to set up a ratchet strap, threading a ratchet strap, just do it yourself, ratchet strap DIY, DIY

Id: EOR0nHWgA4c

Length: 20min 29sec (1229 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 20 2021