how to make a chain gambrel more effective

[krusher167]

so i bought this hook and chain gambrel from vandykes a little while ago with an intention on using it to skin birds, but it was also advertised as being able to handle "small animals".... tonight i have a raccoon thawing with the intention of skinning it tomorrow mornign, and i thought to myself what exactly is small?  So i went through and did some tests and found a problem and a solution to fixing this type of gambrel and making it go from tolerating under 15 lbs to more than 30, and it costs less than a buck to do so.... what follows is some pictures i took while my curiosity got the better of me, take it for what its worth, i figured it'd be useful to someone...

first things first, i secured a rope arounf a girder in my workspace, with a loop to hang the gambrel from


as a preliminary test, i wanted to see how much a single chain could hold, so i hooked a dumbbell to it that weighed between 11 and 12 lbs...

[krusher167]

I soon figured that anything over about 13 or 14 lbs was too much for a single chain, which meant with this gambrels design that that was the most it could hold.... but that wasnt good enough for me... the effect of anything over 15 lbs would cause the links in the chain to pull out, here is a coupla pictures of the links of the chains, in the first the chain on the right is the strained one, it is the one on the left in the second... both of these were from a wieght of about 20 lbs, i let it sit for less than a second then grabbed it to prevent the chain from breaking      (If you have trouble picking it out, the shadows in this first pic are quite telling)


in the above pic i was able to detach the links individually on the strained chain, its not much but the fact that it was pulling out just under the weight of gravity meant that any pressure applied during skinning could pop the chain...

[krusher167]

My solution?  after digging through some drawers i found what i was looking for, a keychain carabiner, this one happened to be free cos it was from a successful completion of boater's safety a few years ago, but since an actual climbing one isnt necessary, at least not with this setup, you could pick up one at any hardware store for under a buck usually...

boat safe.... boat smart... 

i then fastened it to my loop in the rope, notice the nifty little black strap with a D ring on it that would come in handy later... but not to hang the gambrel from since it is fabric, i hooked the chain to the metal of the carabiner...

[krusher167]

as opposed to attaching the gambrel by the hook to the carabiner, i did so via the the big split ring that the three chains are connected to, because it is very strong, unlike the chain links... i then hooked up a dumbbell that weighed just over 20 lbs to two of the chains and hung the third one on the nifty D ring, so as to not have a hook swinging at eye level....

once that passed the test with flying colors, i hooked up a milk crate with the same two chains and started stacking barbell wieghts in it to max it out, in the pic its a 25 lb plate, followed by a 5 lb and a 2.5 lb... i maxed it out at 35 lbs (plus about a pound for the milk crates weight), but even at the weight the chains were pulling very, very slowly.... at 32.5 there was no pulling whatsoever... as you can see in the pic the chains are strained from the 35 lbs

dont worry, my hand isnt holding it up, its just merely keeping it stable for the pitcure

with the addition of the inexpensive carabiner and using only two hooks i was able to more than double the weight that this 3 dollar gambrel could hold, which would be probably just under 35 pounds, although i wouldnt hang an animal over 30 so i could apply pressure to the skin or spin it if need be... using this logic and some creative anchor points and hanging, one could hang 45 pounds or possibly a little bit more using all three chains, all without any major modifications of this super simple tool.... thats only meant for medium sized birds and smaller animals... i would like to thank ya'll for ur time, hopefully this'll help someone else who is like me and likes to get the most out of everything they own...

[Thunderboltguy]

Nice, thanks for sharing.

[Uncle Harley]

uh .....yeah.....that ishow it was designed to use.  It was never designed to hang from one hook.   I have a screw in the table to drop the ring over and use flat when I need tension,  and I  hang it from the ceiling with metal rod with the end bent in opposite directions like a 4 ft long S hook when I want to work floating.   Try the table,  don't have to worring about it rotating on you while you are tyring to skin.

[Jaymic]

Wow

[krusher167]

i was starting to wonder when someone would pipe up about this like "i knew all this stuff".... not the point... the guy who i first learnt taxidermy with- great guy, wonderful artist- used em one chain up, two down, he had one hook off and rplaced it with an o-ring, and i asked him if he ever had one pop, he said no, but then again all he did were birds... i figured if he could get it wrong, so could others, its a learnign site... besides, i had to do something to kill time while waiting for the coon to thaw, hahaha....

[Timber Ghost]

 

[Uncle Harley]

i was starting to wonder when someone would pipe up about this like "i knew all this stuff".... not the point... the guy who i first learnt taxidermy with- great guy, wonderful artist- used em one chain up, two down, he had one hook off and rplaced it with an o-ring, and i asked him if he ever had one pop, he said no, but then again all he did were birds... i figured if he could get it wrong, so could others, its a learnign site... besides, i had to do something to kill time while waiting for the coon to thaw, hahaha....

Point well taken..............I haven't been on here for awhile and sometimes I forget we aren't the sharpest bunch of knives in a drawer around here LOL

[Redwolf]

Not that I'm trying to be a jerk, but why not just buy a heavy duty one? You can make one easy enough with stronger chain too.

[PLTannery]

I made one like the one vandykes sells... Wasn't happy with it as I kept stretching links as I use mine on a small rope thru a little pully, hanging from the ceiling. That way I can change the height of the critter as I skin.

I ended up scraping the chain and using that 1/16" nylon string thru the hooks.   When tied with the right knots you will not break the string...  The hooks to fatigue after a while but it works great for me, and I can hang 25 pound off it... And Pull enough tension on it to skin out nasty scarred up bear feet with relative ease.

I use it for all my small mammal skinning... I have a bigger hoist in the center of the shop I can hang deer and bear off of and an electric hoist outside that I can put a 1500 pound cow on... which is REALLY nice.

But that little hoist over the table with the hooks is awesome for turning feet and skinning out coyote heads.

[Uncle Harley]

the reason there is 3 hooks is that these were originally designed to assist with skinning out samll birds. As you know bird bones will break long before the chain will when doing a small bird ,  so the hooks were there to penetrate  into the meat.  having only one or 2 hooks  would cause them to easily tear out of the meat whereas adding the 3rd prevented it in most cases.

[CrabCrazy]

mine is made of med tuna hooks with barbs ground off and wired to heavy duty braided fishing leader on swivels.  then to heady duty chains...will hold upto 400 .lbs