How to Choose a Positioning Lanyard

You trust your life to your positioning lanyard, so make sure you have the right kind! This quick video gives an in-depth look at three of the different kinds of positioning lanyards available at TreeStuff and the differences between them.

Hi, I'm Nick Bonner for TreeStuff.com. And we're going to look at a couple different lanyard options. Talk about some of the differences and how you would configure some of these options. Because online you know, you go on the website, there's like, a lot. If I say 100 someone on YouTube will say there's not 100 but there's a lot of different lanyard configurations. When we start talking about whether or not to use a process or a mechanical adjuster, what kind of pulley you're going to use, it really starts to get out we aren't going to discuss some of the fancier adjusters today. We'll save those for a different video.

So if you're looking for the ART adjuster, or the zillion, or zeelion on those things are not in today's video, but here you're gonna see a very basic setup. This is my preferred setup. I've got a wrapstar hitch right here, Sterling tritec which I firmly believe is the best lanyard material out there. It's extremely durable, it offers a minor amount of cut resistance, that to me just transfers into really long lasting durability. So we've got an ISC triple action snap here. Again, we're coming to a Simple pulley, this just happens to be the notch one, any climbing pulley really will work here. You know, until you start adding extra holes, I don't know that there's a lot of benefit between switching between the different arborist pullies. But you know, this one's cheap, and it works really well. So here I am D to D, obviously, you know, these ladders can be used to the lower DS as well. And all of them are going to kind of, you know, be able to do this, so I won't demonstrate that necessarily with all of them. So, you know, this is, again, like going to be your most basic climbing lanyard setup, right, it's going to be terminated in some way to this, whether it's open or closed, or, you know, even maybe simply with a double fisherman's knot there. There's a ton of different other types, you know, you can look at what's called a double ended adjustable lanyard and this at first glance is going to look really similar to the lander that I just showed you, except one of the big differences is I've tied a bidirectional knot here.

So on here I have a vt are a valdotain tresse - braids and twists and you know this is only going to work in one direction. Whereas this one is going to work in either so what that gives you is it allows you to turn this lanyard into a double ended adjustable and I could have done it with that smaller one but it's going to work better with this longer one here. And so here you know I could say I'm lanyarded it in here, I can take the tail of this lanyard and come around here and then use it to clip in and now I have a second point of safety attachment however because I'm using a pulley here, if this one wasn't on and I were to even if I had this nice and tight, if I were to fall, you see it's just going to run out right now. That's okay. Kind of in that, you know I would have taken a fall but I am still protected. So you will see a lot of people go ahead and While they're switched in, you'll see them. So they'll be tied in here like this. They'll come up nice and tight. They're nice and secure. And let's say they need to switch over to this limb. They'll take this one and put it here as kind of that backup safety. Right? And then from a positive stance, you'll see people come in like this. Right and move this lanyard around until it gets over here, and then wait into it knowing that had they fall in this one would have saved them. Is that appropriate for every condition? No, it isn't. You as a climber need to make a decision as to whether or not you can use a double ended adjustable lanyard in that fashion. However, if you're ever unsure and you feel like you need both legs of that to run, you can simply remove the pulley and because we're using a bi directional process, it's good work in both directions and it won't run because of that pulley. So that's another option.

You don't need to use tri tech to do this. You don't have to have splice ties or snaps, you know, you can make one of these with a prusik and a piece of arborist rope with knots in it and carabiners. So, great option, I started climbing on a double ended adjustable lanyard. It really made sense to me. And it gave me a lot of options before I knew how to integrate back and forth between my climbing system and my lanyard, which isn't something that we're demonstrating here today. As you start to look away from rope lanyards and towards more mechanical things here I'm going to show you two new things, two different things. So this is a steel or wire core lanyards on these are not chainsaw proof, they are cut resistant. I don't think that you can cut through one of these with a handsaw in a reasonable real life scenario.

So for me personally, I feel pretty comfortable using my hand saw around one of these but you absolutely can cut through this with a trim saw. So You know, you can watch all the YouTube videos that you want that say you can or you can't, I'm telling you right now that you can cut through this with even a small trim saw. So these are not chainsaw proof. But right away, you'll see that the wire does offer more than just cut resistance and that it offers a certain amount of rigidity. This can be really nice when you're flipping up on spurs, and you need to push that lanyard up. So you see, that works really well right there and it doesn't suffer from moisture or from like, you know, just the general floppiness that regular rope does. In a lot of other ways this is going to work just like a regular tree climbing lanyard. You see this one here has a swiveling snap hook on it. I definitely recommend a swivel when you're using a steel cable inside of the lane or it doesn't have the same rotation that rope does and this will just make it a lot easier. On this side you see I've switched to a mechanical adjuster which I cannot pay out under load, so it's no noticeable difference between using a prusik However, when I go to slack it out does work really well on when I'm not weighted, and it does ascend nice and smooth and there's very little setback with this, the only setback you're really going to see is the amount of this pivoting action, whereas with a prospect, it tends to be a little bit more. You can absolutely use one of these steel core lanyards with a prusik if you choose to. And it'll work just like the first lanyard that I showed. You know, and you can even use one of these as a double and adjustable lanyard if you wanted to.

So these come in a lot of different lengths. The ropelogic ones I think are by far and above the best, you know, you do see failures associated with old age and a lack of a lack of people, replacing them with some of the other brands. We've never had a failure with one of these ever. It's because we don't just like swage the cable in there. The cable and the load supporting jacket are both held underneath this wage. So you have redundancy because the jacket and the cable are both strong enough for you. And you've never seen one of these fail and I don't think you have We'll so if you're going to get a steel core lanyard absolutely get a rope logic one. The other brands might be a little cheaper or you might find them at more stores or something like that. But these are absolutely the best and certainly the safest. You just you see too many pictures of those orange ones failing. Definitely really like this.

If you work in a standards rich environment, you know where you have, you need something that meets every standard associated depending on your industry or your employer. We also sell this this is called AZUA. So that is ANSI, UL, underwriter laboratory approved or listed, right. This means every relevant us certification it's made out of nine sixteenths rope. It has a stitch that comes with a big snap here, which is an ansi rated snap, or anthy. It's a snap that meets the anthy ratings, excuse me, ANSI doesn't rate things. So I try to avoid saying ANSI rated but it meets the ANSI ratings. And then also over here you're going to notice the carabiner has a 3600 pound gate, which also meets the ANSI requirements. So this lanyard comes complete with everything that you need to meet every us standard regardless of what kind of industry you're in. I think that requires a work positioning or fall restraint lanyard your so you know, if you work in, in a workplace where something like this was required, I think this is a great choice. It might not be my first choice necessarily as an arborist lanyard. But it definitely is a good choice if it's something that's required.

I hope that this video was helpful for you guys in determining which tree climbing lanyard might be right for you. I always recommend people start with something simple, you know, a double ended, adjustable lanyard like this will never be a bad place for someone to start all of the components that go into it are going to be able to evolve as you decide to go towards something that's maybe a little sporty or with a vt hitch or something like this that's unidirectional or if you decide you want to add a mechanical adjuster again Type, you know, those can all be added to these smaller ropes. Sterling tritec I think is a great choice especially for beginners. If they do nick it with their handsaw, you know it's going to be more resistant to that and you know, definitely a safer option. So, check all these lanyards out this and everything we sell at treestuff.com is always available for 5% off with the discount code 'arborist' thanks for watching.