Description

Soft Shackle

A rope soft shackle offers a strong lightweight alternative to a metal shackle.
The origins of these started when yachtsmen started used Soft Shackles in 2009.

The Advantages

The soft shackle weighs little and is less likely to cause injury if it strikes a person.
It is easy to store in your truck cab, doesn’t damage surrounding kit, doesn’t rust and can be used for in far more situations that a traditional steel shackle.
Final tightening of the Lanyard (Button) Knot is critical. The tightened knot should feel and behave like a wooden ball.

Strength

Soft shackles have been extensively tested. The ideal strength might approach four times the line strength as there are two lines on each side of the shackle – four in all. In practice, the line just under the knot and the kinking in the loop are the weak points and it has  been shown that breakage typically occurs around 150% of Line Strength. This means when attached to a single winch line, it is likely the winch line will break long before the soft shackle does.

All our soft shackles are published as rated / certified to the figures above and come with rating label.

A soft Shackle does not need a sheath or sleeve on it. Especially with the Snatch Rings, as this outer sleeve does not work well under friction unlike the rope, which does. However we can supply wear sleeves to protect your soft shackle if you are using them around other objects but the S-Ring should never be run on the sleeve.

Durability

Our testing has show that using the larger diameter ropes to construct the Soft Shackle works best with recovery situations. Giving much bigger factors of safety in the line and a more practical feel to them.

Marking

All RED Winches soft shackles are individually marked with the following information:

• Part Number
• Minimum Breaking Strain
• Batch Number
• Serial Number
• Date of Manufacture

This information is printed on waterproof polyester sheet as a robust marking system.

50T MBS!

In 2020 RED Winches were approached for specific recovery equipment for a special user group. One of the items requested was a soft shackle with a minimum  breaking strain of 50T. To achieve this 20mm rope was required but the traditional monkey fist knot proved difficult with such large rope so this hybrid shackle design was created using a metal dog bone in place of the knot.

The metal dog bone allows a place for serial number and date of manufacture to be added to the shackle.