How to Use Arborist Throw Line

Learning how to properly use your tree access equipment can save you a load of trouble! Watch this video for some tips and tricks on using your throwline and throw weights so you can get started climbing faster.

Hi, I'm Nick Bonner for TreeStuff.com, and today we're going to talk about the basics of throw line, and how to hopefully get the throw line over at least a very low limb that's wide open, and you can see it. So here we have a basic throw line cube. If you're using someone else's arborist throw line, you definitely want to ask them how they have it set up before you just go start pulling on it, you can really make a mess out of tree climbing throw line. But for me, I do it the way I think a lot of people do. And I keep the top of my throw line attached to await and velcroed in closest to the end with the bottom of the throw line velcroed in closest to the end of the to the inside of the Velcro.

When you look at your system, you have your throw line and your throw weight, and you've got to attach those together. So here I've tried a simple bite knot this is a great way of doing it. When you go to take it off. It's quick and it's easy, and there's nothing to get caught in the tree. However it can, if you tie the knot incorrectly come undone so I'll show you really quick How to tie this knot. You'll simply suspend the throw line and give it a twist or two. And that'll create a little double X right here. And then you just pull the tail through there, forming a little bite and you tighten it down, you need to make sure that this is dressed correctly. If this bite is rolled around on the other side of the ring, it can very easily become loose. And when you throw it, it can, you know, go fly and off the end of the line. So you can see that's on there pretty well. It's very secure. And like I said, well, it's pretty secure. And like I said, when you go to take it off, it's going to instantly come off. Another way that does have some downside is to simply tie a loop or splice a loop in the end of your line. Now, I've just done that with a simple overhand knot. It's nothing elegant. This can in rare circumstances get caught going through the tree. So some people don't prefer this but putting the throw ball on is really simple, it's pretty dummy proof. And all you do is just girth hitch it on there. I tend to do it this way, simply because I've had throw balls come off. And through teaching and working with people at events and stuff, it's easier for me to be really sure that the throw ball is on there.

So when it comes time to throw the throw ball, you do want to make careful, sure, be careful to make sure that one end of your throw line is anchored. And we already know that because the other end of my throw line is on a weight but you don't want to throw your throw line way up in the tree, have all the line go and have it zip away from you and go across the yard or through a window or hit someone or just get lost at all. So what we'll look at now is how we're going to hold the throw line. Obviously it wants to move through my hands so simply pinching it like this won't get the job done. One of the first methods that I was taught is to bend Throw a line like this, and then pinch it with your thumb in between there and that way, when you let go of it, it's gonna just go totally unrestricted from your hand. So you'll hang it on your index finger, bend it with your middle finger, you're actually bending the line to the rope, and then pinching with your thumb there. And that's going to give you a pretty good hold, and allow you to throw it at your target. So another way to hold it is to simply tie a slip knot here, so that the slip is towards your cube and not towards the weight. And then that gives you something little to hold on to and pinch. And when you throw it, that knot should come out. Now you see I didn't throw it very far. The knot didn't come all the way out. It kind of made it part of the way and sometimes that can jam and get really tight like that. And that can be another thing that could potentially get stuck. Walk in the tree. That's not the way that I do it, I've always pinched it and held it like this.

The other method and there are certainly more than these three. But another method would be to do what's called a granny toss. You take the top part of the line and push it through the ring and then you level it out. And this is going to give you two things to hold on to, and you'll swing weight between your legs before throwing it and letting it go like that. Again, that's also not the method that I use, but it is another one. That is, you know, still fairly common out there. So we'll go with I'll show you what I do, and that's where I pinch it over my index finger and then bend it back in with my ring finger, securing the two of them with my thumb. I'll stand I'll look at my target. I'm aiming for the second branch going off to the left here, it's a nice wide open crotch, it's very low, and I should be able to hit it. And while I concentrate on that area, that zone above the union, I'm going to swing the throw like throw a ball back and forth, and try to get a nice lifting motion as it's coming from back to front. Some people really get into it with their knees and there's all sorts of different techniques. But ultimately, I want to use that pendulum and lift the throw line until it gets where I needed to go right and let it go at the very end now, you can see here I overshot where I wanted to get the throw ball it went past the union and it came down and it's stuck in a little bit of brush now, I could walk all the way out there and get that and if I was climbing SRT, it might not matter as much because I was gonna base tie but I think in any system here being tangled up in that brush is probably not Ideal. So we want to make sure that we get the throw ball isolated. And to do that, I'm going to carefully pull it back and I can see where it's bending. It doesn't look like it's going through anything too tight. And I don't think that it's going to get tangled and see I was able to pull it back, but they're still there. So I don't know if that's a hanger or a loose piece of brush up there. So a little careful manipulation and I was able to bring the throw ball from the other side of the limb onto this side. Now I have both sides of the throw on they're coming down unobstructed and I'm able to set up a friction saver, climb DRT, MRS, climb SRT, SRS, set of rigging lines or whatever.

When it comes time to attach line. So throw a ball. There are a lot of methods that you can use Depending on whether or not you have a splice, you might just be able to use a simple carabiner or a micro carabiner. A lot of times you'll see people just stick their rope through the ball, and then tie an overhand knot or a figure eight knot. In a union like what we see here, this certainly would work, it would be very quick. And to be honest, this is probably the method that I would choose. However, you know, I have had these knots roll out and I've certainly gotten this stuck in trying to pull it through tighter union so this won't always work. When you go to attach the line to the throw line to your climbing line or to your rigging line, I think it's important that you know how to do it without having a splice or using kind of that that fast method. So even disregarding that I have this nice loop here at the end, you can simply create a girth hitch in your throw line, put that around the rope, go about a foot down and tighten it up, get it on there, so it's nice and tight. And then using the both the tail and the main part of it, you're going to install a series of half hitches and those are really easy. You're just going to bend the throw a line around the tail of the rope, and then tighten it up and lay it in. Eventually you'll run out of the secondary tail unless you made it super long where you folded the rope over. That's okay, you can just keep doing it with the single tail. And especially if you're using a friction saver or there's a tight union you want to get through, you want to take this pretty close to the end so that you're not creating like a thing that gets stuck here or something that has to fold over.

Once you've done that. It's as simple as pulling the rope up and over the branch. That's the basics of how to use a throw line. I think one of the biggest things that I best piece of advice that I can give someone that's looking to use the throw line is do your best to keep it organized in a nice, clean space, the less that you throw line gets tangled and the better care you take of it and your throw weights, the more reliable it's going to be, the less frustrating it's going to be in the better results that you'll achieve. So all the throw line, throw balls, the gear you see everything we sell is 5% off with the discount code. arborist everyday a tree stuff.com. Thanks for watching.