Off Grid Winch: Making a Flip Flop Winch

hi guys this is Todd with survival Sherpa today I wanted to demonstrate a flip-flop winch which I first saw demonstrated and performed by mr. Morris Cohan ski and it is a very powerful simple machine that uses leverage that can be used to pull vehicles out of mud for example I've got my truck down there and it's not actually stuck but it's it's in neutral and we're going to pull that thing and it's it's it's going to mean it's it's a heavy little truck it may look small but it's a heavy little truck four wheels i mean a four wheelers snowmobiles any other any other kind of equipment if you had to move a big heavy log or rock or something like that this kind of simple machine will come in handy so all we're doing here is we've got two logs this one they're about eight foot long we've got a we're just going to make a simple loop of with this rope this is going this side right here is going to the Anchor Point which is a solid wood tree up in the edge of the woods so we're just going to take a loop and we're going to go under like this so that we've got a loop of line right here your subs just other piece will be on top okay so we've got a loop of line here we're going to take this is going to be our barrel our barrel pole which will actually have the windings of the rope on it as we turn the turn the flip flop went on and this is the lever pole it's the cedar pole this is just pine both of dads standing and it goes through there just like that and then we just simply tighten tighten up this rope coming from our anchor point we can just pull that around tight there pull that back tight there and now we're ready to start turning our our winch okay now I'm going to go back over here this leading to my truck to my vehicle is not tied off yet let's go tie that off right here all right so I've just run it through a one of the holes in the bumper and we're just going to do a little constrictor knot here so we got about three three or four wraps in there this next one I'm just going to come back through this loop there now this knot right here will hold what we want to do okay so so is good idea to have some kind of cordage heavy towing strap or something that can be used if you've ever around the woods got stuck our car in a ditch this kind of stuff with this with this simple machine the flip-flop which will help you get out of a bind okay when pulling a real heavy machine vehicle or whatever I found that it's very helpful to put a you it will make a little more sense in a minute once we get to turning but put a stake in the ground here in line with the bet with the drum pole and a stake on the ground on the other side where the drum pole will land all right so we've got this thing set up right now we're going to begin turning this hold with our lever pull over and then we'll flip this barrel pole will flop it over to the other side okay move in a little closer here okay so what we've got now with one term you might want to sweets since you've still got a little slack in the line make sure that you get these these uh these loops in a relatively straight fashion if you can now with one turn of the lever pole we're going to flip flopped and we will flop this barrel pull over now we'll do this again lever pull I'm just going to bring it over there as you can see this thing is beginning to wind itself around this barrel pole this pole here is just a dead piece of time it is it's not it doesn't have to be very I mean it needs to be shouldn't be poke wood but it don't have to be real sturdy this pole the lever pole is the one that you want to be good and solid okay so we we just flip the lever pole we're going to flip this flip flop the barrel pole back over now you can see that this once tension gets built up on this line this this stake in the ground will keep this barrel pole from flipping back towards the trunk of the veal okay so let's twist again here now I'm going to show you something that right here on this line that I've done now it's a good idea to put some kind of string or something to hold this because once tension gets on this this thing has a tendency to pop back up or fly off to the side a little bit so all I did here was just took a piece of paracord and just tied a prusik loop on here so I can slide this thing up and down I've got one on the other end of this of this towline as well okay so it's going to type Russert loop on here so I can slide this with my of course it's not not enough tension to need to warrant that yet but just so you know that's what thankful that's what that's okay I'm going to mark it with this salt on the ground just to give us a reference as to how far we've pulled the truck okay here's the tire of the truck and I've got it right at the back and we've only got two wraps on it we're going to wrap some more and just see how far that goes blah penis of this oh here let's get some tension on it we're not ready for no need to tie it off on the roof yet good put my loop on here just in case now there's inherent danger using a rope that's all you've got yet something that is strong enough to do the job but there's a lot of tension on this road for fit snaps you know it could really do some damage to you so but in an emergency situation you've got to use the rope that you've got so I would recommend that you take precautions listen to your gut okay all right so we're going to lift this again or the saw right there just moved must have been on a little hill that caught a little gravity and okay for demonstration purposes I think this will work the truck is free with only six turns we freed a truck from the from the hole that the front tire was in okay okay so we want to unwind this we're just going to first one here okay okay right so guys this is um just a good tool to having your tool kit and with rope and a cutting tool find you two logs that wood that will do the job and you can unstick a trunk get it unstuck pull things off of whatever you've got that you need pulled or winched this thing will work okay alright guys I appreciate you watching and until next time keep doing stuff self-reliance take care

Channel: Survival Sherpa

Views: 2,257,944

Rating: 4.7967787 out of 5

Keywords: simple machines, flip flop winch, off grid winch, woodsman, homesteading, bushcraft, Georgia Bushcraft, woodcraft, camping, survival, outdoor self-reliance, wilderness living, Survival Sherpa, Doing the Stuff, Todd Walker

Id: QFDGGht3CQU

Length: 12min 30sec (750 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 25 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/RGeronimoH]

Brilliant idea if you're stuck and have no other means.

[u/diputsru]

I wish he would have talked about the differences of rope: yacht braid, static, dynamic, 1/2 inch, 5/8 inch, etc...

Its a cool idea, but the danger of not understanding knots, rope care, pulling tensions, and numerous other things could seriously injure someone.

Also, the truck he was pulling was more than likely a Mazda b series with a Max weight of approximately 3700 lbs.

[u/TrashTruck31]

He is merely demonstrating a technique that can be used. You, all of the experts, decide how and when to use the technique.

[u/cwm9]

This looks incredibly dangerous. A too-thin rope pulling a truck and the person standing right in the middle? I'm cringing thinking of what's going to happen when that rope breaks and the snapback takes off his leg...

[u/baughberick]

Would it be possible to make the barrel log much shorter, just long enough to hold the windings of the rope? So long as the stakes were closer to prevent it from rotating. Might have a loop slip off which could cause some damage.

[u/APHTHARTO]

wow that's amazing. i always thought to get a mechanical winch but now i see it's possible to do manually with 2 chopsticks.