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"Apart from sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?" ~ John Cleese

I love how big your builds have gotten. It is really impressive. Maybe you could get a display at a local museum for people to see your work.

In regards to the home made rope's strength, did you go through the process of soaking and stretching the finished rope? by gently pulling and holding tension on the rope it can help align the lengths of fibers/cordage to share the load more evenly. Regardless, dont be disappointed with it. we know how knots make cables weaker and the weather conditions wouldnt have helped either!

That's a beautiful build. I hope you store those things well when you're done with them so they're preserved. Maybe a museum somewhere would like the crane.

I love how things have progressed from your original sandwich. As for lifting heavy things, I suggest water. 1M³ of water weights 1000kg, or 2200lbs. It's safe and easy to transport. Plus if it drops and breaks, no one will get hurt, just wet. It's not as dramatic as a car, but you can progress slowly lifting more and more weight in small steps as you add more water. Ibc water totes are easy to get and cheap. They can hold up 1250L

1:44 Addressing the problem is a huge step toward confronting your Wheel making addiction Andy

In regards to safety, you may need a changeable ratcheting gear that keeps the load from moving the wheel. while someone is in it.

there is a famous saying in germany. 'kranplätze müssen verdichtet werden'. which roughly translate into 'crane ground have to be compacted. which is beautiful.

I feel like the rope machine should have warranted a whole video unto itself. Because that looks impressive for just being one step

Honestly while the entire project and effort is incredible, I'm most impressed with the rope. Not only did it come out looking incredible good and functioning well, the time and effort really shows! This is an incredible improvement over previous ropes you guys have made! It's just so impressive what you guys are achieving!

For the gears, proper depthing is really important. Look up clock depthing tools. Building something along those lines would help you a great deal.

I can not tell you the number of times I have seen tow cabs teetered into the air from improper rigging to the vehicle being recovered. The most impressive/scary time was when our Kenworth tow truck was trying to pull a cement mixer truck out of a muddy construction site. Even with the legs deployed at the back the front wheels of the Kenworth ended up about 4 feet into the air.

I definitely love how clearly your woodworking has improved over the years. Also your builds in general, that rope is beautiful

Havent finished yet so maybe addressed. I would add a ratchet system to help hold the load when lifting. If you need to lower it, you could have a release mechanism built in along with a lever/pad system for a brake. (Or ratchet/pawl system the opposite way to hold while lowering)

I love that you’re testing your homemade rope. Ive only ever done the same small things you have, and never really tested it to the same extreme. A lot of people mentioned the guedelon castle when you built the wheel, and I feel like you’re doing the same thing on a smaller scale. They actually noted that safety helmets and store-bought ropes for their cranes are two of the few modern precautions they take, and I feel like you did a great job showing why.

When you use pulleys, that changes the force geometry so that the A-frame needs to be more vertical or anhcored more securely. You can't hold it with tent pegs, you need poles. That's what Romans used.

Love your progress so far! Love how far into industry you're getting! I have a few suggestions for the stability of your crane setup. The closer to vertical the arm is, the more the weight is transfered into the arm vs the rope, the more you can lift. You can explain it like shortening the "load" end of the teeter-totter. You can also extend the frame attached to the wheel past the load. This will eliminate the pivot entirely and give the option of adding legs to support the arm rather than ropes from behind. On the other hand this will limit the size of what you can lift as well as portability. For stakes you could Forge corkscrew - shaped anchors that twist into the ground like modern dog - anchors

Absolutely love all the videos.. This crane is awesome how simple the design is but its so effective.. Only concern is that the anchoring rods for the crane may be a little short if you are looking to lift heavy loads.. Another option is using a counter weight keep the crane stable.

I think the issue with the gears might be that the gear teeth do not temper off into more of a point than a cylinder. Using cylinders which don't turn into a flattened end or a pointy end, means the ends will hook into the wood instead of sliding off, when you're trying to rotate it. The angle of the tips of the gear teeth should be higher than the angle of (in math terms) the normal line at the point where the gear teeth disconnects from the other gear.

I’ve made that same kind of rope twister from Grant’s old TKOR video! It was used in a popsicle stick bridge building competition to turn dental floss into rope for cables!

Entertainment rigger here. Currently studying for my ETCP certification. That homemade rope is super cool but I thought I could weigh in on a couple of things. First thing is knots. Every knot decreases the efficiency of your rope but by different amounts. If you have to use a knot go with a bowline or a figure eight. Those knots are 70% effective, meaning that your rope will break at 70% of its original breaking strength. Bowline knots ate what we use in the industry. An eye splice would be even better at 95% efficiency. The Marlinspike Sailor is a great book with pretty simple instructions on how to do any splicing. Next is design factors. When you inspect lifting hardware you'll see it's marked with WLL or SWL for Working Load Limit or Safe Working Load. Those numbers are a ratio of the average breaking strength of that hardware. A 5:1 design factor is pretty standard, but when flying people or dynamic loads over people we'll use up to a 10:1 ratio. So basically, take the theoretical breaking strength of your rope and divide that by five. That would be a good WLL for that rope with a huge safety margin. The last bit in not a huge deal, but it's worth mentioning. The way you've got that pallet rigged up is a form of bridle. It's worth paying attention to because when your lifting anything that's not on one single straight vertical line you exert horizontal forces onto it as well as vertical forces. The length of the ropes you use will adjust the angle of their apex and will affect the forces on those legs pretty dramatically. Hold your hand in front of you and raise your index and middle finger. That's a good rule of thumb to get you close to a 30° angle. Index finger and pinky is close to 60°. Index and thumb 90° and thumb and pinky is close to 120°. Never, for any reason, lift anything on a bridle of more that 120°. Super danger! The shorter the legs of your bridle, the larger that angle will be. The larger the angle, the more force will be exerted on those legs. Finally I didn't notice you do it, but be sure not to simply loop around the underneath of your pallet. I know that may seem like it would create an extra bit of safety, but what it actually does is increase the horizontal forces to a dangerous level pretty quickly. I hope that information helps. I think your channel is super cool and I would hate to see one of yall injured in a bad way.

I think the gears jamming up in the prototype you showed might have been caused by simply not enough stiffness in the frame of the construction. You can see all the gears wobbling around in the box. If front and back plate were coupled to each other firmly, the axis of the hooks wouldnt wobble, therefore the gears would be straight.

this was a great video, andy! I really liked the narration and how it was put together. Was really easy to follow along with what was happening - more like this please!

I think this is a fantastic video!! You did an excellent job proving anyone could produce these feats of engineering with simple machines and all the time/manpower that people had in the past. Keep up the awesome content!!!

You should try to pour a very deep cement pile in the ground, and anchor a hook into the concrete itself. Then you can use your scalr and see how much force it can really pull! Quick tip about the pile.. make it deep, and flare out the hole at the bottom, like an upside down T. That should help make it strong enough not to come out of the ground!

The things you do on this channel are absolutely amazing!

If in the design phase you used longer lumber, to allow you to make a platform on which to store weights (i.e. rocks), then you would have been able to add weight there and continue the experiment, instead of having the crane begin to lift off.

Your rope was absolute art! I just love watching this series.

Them gears need spacers and lubricant between them and the housing. it looked like they were getting cocked and binding on the it

This is amazing! It's always fascinating for me how we as humans reached modern industrial technologies and seeing how it all started from so simple designs carved in wood, centuries of trying, failures, and the unbelievable determination of engineers. Keep up the good work! I love how your equipment grows as you unlock more items so they then can be bought, just like in a game. And the ending scene with the superhero pose was hilarious! XDD

I love your channel! all the ssuppor that you get is amazing! that's another amazing skill needed to make everything, i guess!

you home made rope also needs to be wetted and then waxed, keeping an ideal wet/dry ratio extends how well the rope will work, as the fiber if it dries out too much becomes very brittle (thus why you wax them or oil them)

I love this video and the ending with the real time slowmo flying! You peaked my attention when you started making rope. I've made tons of rope when I was a kid, Boy Scouts. We had a similar machine but super simple with three hooks and a crank. I've never seen an ancient rope making machines with gears before. I was intrigued that you tried making one with gears, because I've made wooden gears and they are really hard to get working smoothly. I went on the hunt for the style I used and found it; the Martin Meyer Rope-making machine. Mine had three hooks and Meyer's had four hooks, I think four hooks will make a stronger rope. The machine is simple, no gears just long bent hooks and two boards. We did this in scouts, combine two planks together to form an "L" shape, make two. Add a horizontal platform, to stand on, between the lower legs of the "L". Add a wide vertical board at the top of the "L", this will be your anchor plate for the hooks. Drill holes through this anchor plate that will fit the hook shafts. Take a separate piece of wide wood plank and drill holes that match the pattern of your anchor plate holes. Add a dowel to the plank you just drilled holes in, to make a crank handle. Make as many hooks as you have holes in your anchor plate, they need to be long enough to go through both planks with 4-6 inches between and 1 inch out the back of the crank plank. Work one hook at a time and while it's still hot and bendable. Heat hook, shove through anchored plate, bend 90deg, 4-6 inches down make another bend at 90 deg, shove though crank plank, don't bend last bit of shaft till all hooks are bent. Your hook shafts will look like a 90 deg "Z". Make all the hooks and bend them all the same length, except the last inch. I would use a piece of flat bar to put against the planks to aid in the bending/pounding and to give a space. Put all hook shafts through the crank plank, place your flat bar and bend over the last inch of all the shafts, locking them all together, but giving them space to move. You should be able to stand on the lower platform and be able to crank the machine. No gears, just bent shafts/axles.

@4:30 it’s usually easiest to put the fibers a little closer to the lever so you can get more mechanical advantage on ut

Incredible video, as usual!

If you round the interior Square beam, you could attach a guide bar that uses the central beam as a roller, to allow something to hold while using the tread wheel, allowing for much higher comfort and safety.

That hemp rope looked really nice! And it was supple too! Youll get the strength eventually.

Another awesome video!

It feels like the shop fire wasnt that long ago and youve really come back swinging. Im so glad you didnt let that stup you in your tracks

Guys, we need to share the channel. It's a crime that this beauty isn't more popular

Excellent! Rope making is in my opinion one of the critical skills of mankind. Thank you.

I've been watching for a few years and I have to say, this is one of the most underrated channels on youtube. So I just want to give a huge shoutout to Andy and the team for keeping making these videos for the loyal fan base even if the deserved views aren't always there. The fans appreciate you and all the hard work you guys put in!

Hemp naval ropes were always treated with oils and waxes, or bitumen/tar. They also used an eye that is woven back into the rope with tapered tails that are sometimes whipped down in place. Sometimes the eye is supported by a metal piece the helps reduce the bend radius.. This should significantly increase pull strength and abrasion resistance. It may also reduce the internal heat buildup within the rope fibers while increasing the hold between the fibers. The woven eye retains nearly the full strength of the rope and allows the weight to be distributed evenly through the entire rope throughout the eye. A knot is going to reduce rope strength by about half by isolating fibers and creating asymmetrical force distribution while also increasing heat, friction, and abrasion as the knot moves a tiny amount under strain. Rope is a huge investment so this may be a thought worth exploring.

I really hope you had an engineer look at the design to analyze any dangerous failure modes of the system and testing procedure. Really cool video though :)

Simple machines are crazy when added together

I LOVE THE VIDEO'S I CAN'T WAIT TO SEE MORE THANK YOU!

Now this is why I’m subbed to this channel!

Try a counter boom out the back with a mast towards the center to compensate for the main boom at the front

Dude that's badass and I now want to build one

you really need to add some type of handrail on the inside of the treadwheel so that there's less chance of someone losing an arm if they stumble or put their hand somewhere they shouldn't. even just a hanging bar that can freely spin on the inside would do a lot, something to balance yourself against will eliminate about 95% of the risk

Your work is getting better every video

If you extend the legs of the crane forward under the boom it should help stabilize it some

Really impressive! Glad the team seems to be growing a little too. Hope to see Lauren still around in the future too.

15:45 You might already know, but depending on which kinds of knots you use, they can _severely_ weaken your rope! Perhaps look into climbing rope knots and related techniques.

This was by far the cleanest projects you've done so far.

i suggest 8:30 adding spacers you can make it c shaped and u can use whatever lubricant you want but it will definitely not tip

A larger base for your crane as well as the improvements to the anchors would stop the tilting.

This is crazy such a cool project

Granted, I haven’t made rope since I was in Scouts. But when I did it, we did it by hand with a relatively simple machine, twisting. Could be worth a look

Love binging your videos

Great work. I love low tech engineering. A counter weight probably would help out a lot.

Try the stakes facing backwards instead of forwards to keep them in, what we were taught in scouts for camping against strong winds

If this works so well on the first-ish try, no wonder how people in Roman empire could have used this to build the giant structures!

Maybe try putting a counterweight on the back of the crane? I’m pretty sure modern cranes have them

5:20 "Behold! The world's worst ever toothbrush!"

I think hemp oil would play a big roll here......to lube all the moving parts

needs sledge style bed logs to anchor those ropes and work as a stop for the arm.

Would definitely be cool to see your items at the Shakopee ren faire

It's funny how every little thing can turn into a whole new area of knowledge. Even the rope turned out to need a whole new set of skills

you should probably be using water as a test weight, its easily accessible, easy to manage. And its really heavy. As for the gears, you should be using proper tooth geometry, or at least something that resembles it, peg and cog setups are just painful at best. They aren't hard to manufacture, the hardest part would be spacing the teeth properly, which should be possible.

If it's not cost prohibitive, a booth at the State Fair next year to see these in person would be great

An important rule of rating for crane saftey; take your weakest compnant, calculate what it should hold. Test it to 80% of that load. then rate it at HALF the test load

There's a guy on YT from ND who tosses the ditch weed onto his gravel driveway and over the course of a week of driving over all of it, the fibers are separated and ready for processing.

As someone who loves history, this is such a great channel. Keep doing what you're doing!

How do you expect wooden pullies to hold up to a ton? Is there some magic to it?

You guys would be my favorite neighbors... despite the scary garage fire. I would always be peeking over my fence to check out your crazy projects and offering any help you might need. Hahaha!

This is pretty cool! 👍

5:01 ANDY! Phrasing!

Thinking about the shape of modern gears and their , try tapering the dowels

Once you've worked out the kinks it would be neat to see you lift quarry blocks. They are ~4000lbs and available at many modern quarries. Probably the closest thing to their original purpose too.

for wood gears you should look at Matthias Wandel's older videos about wood gears

A suggestion you could make the bottom run of the tread wheel longer both ends one to give a more center point closer to the object you are lifting and o bit out the back to put weight on, aswell as a toothed gear to stop it from running backwards

Did you remember to oil your homemade rope? It helps the fibers line up and hold together.

So impressive!

What about one of those sideways pirate ship cranks? The one with all the pegs where multiple men can push together.

I would guess that the belt/pulley for winding the string/rope allows for 'slipping'. Basically the rope/cord tightness is limited by the friction of the leather belt against a wood pulley. You did mention taking a deep dive into gears, it would be interesting to make another rope with intermeshing gears and a long arm on the input gear and see if the breaking point changes. I suspect it will

If you wanted a good reason to go even bigger with the wheel, you'd be able to stand up under the center axel after a certain size.

There's a few easy ways to multiply the amount of anchoring you can do - and you don't need to use metal anchors either. If you put a stick horizontally on the ground, and tie off your rope to that stick, and put a few stakes to hold that horizontal stick down, you can multiply the anchoring force by six times, easily. Using wood stakes also means that the cross-section will be larger, making it less likely to cut through the ground like your metal stakes did.

Try hand weaving a small rope for the rope making wheels and make a gripping grid for the rope on the wheels, tie the small rope on the wheels as tight as possible.

You should consider adding a counterweight to stop the rig from lifting off the ground like in the last test.

If you want to get even more power, I might suggest building a capstan, like what was used on Age of Exploration sailing ships. It’s a very simple design - just a vertical spindle and a ratchet to hold the tension. Then, you can have (for an eight bar design) anywhere from 8-24 or more people working together to provide effort to the machines you’re driving with it. Also, you could in theory have draft animals turn the capstan if you could find someone willing to let you borrow their horses!

I would like to see you take another crack at making rope. From what I've heard, removing the wooden part of hemp is pretty well accomplished by a pair of crushing rollers. Though, I'm not sure how you'll accomplish that using the tools at your command.

looks really good but you should round or at least champer the corners on where the rope winds up to prevent chafing.

I'd love to see you collab with thr hownot2 crew on the history of rope making

Talking about force multipliers, consider grabbing them hammer handles at the very end. :)

A quary would be the perfect place to test, the climbing community has more or less perfected anchoring stuff into stone and you have loads of heavy stones to lift

It'd be interesting to connect an alternator to the wheel and see how much electricity you could produce. It's a bit further down the technological track, but maybe once you clear the industrial revolution you could revisit it :)

yeah this is sick. did you try soaking the rope before heavy lifts?

You should block the end of the A with the pulley (the crane) so the weight of A arms aren't on the pully bar.