Over the years (decades?) Lord that makes me feel old...... I have probably reeled in miles of cable while hanging on the hook. I lean back hard and move back and forth to lay it evenly.
That is my preferred method in the field. Whenever I bought a new spool of cable I always did the first loading with heavy tension and careful wrapping. During the year, if the used amount was not too much, I often just rewound it by hand. Using my drag system for the end of the hunting season for long term storage. But some years the pulls were long and often.
Those times my system got used more often because it was easier than leaning back for 150 feet of slow walking.
Your wrapping job looks fine. I would only rewrap it as a first time thing to make sure you have all the slack and space out. After the first wrapping, if you keep it looking that well after each pull, the cable will last a lot longer.
One thing, my big PTO winch has a mechanical brake that is automatically applied to the spool when it is taken out of gear. Not designed for or strong enough to prevent you from pulling the cable off, just enough so that the spring tension of the cable does not cause it to unspool when out of gear.
As a result, I am able to leave the winch out of gear for safety's sake.
If yours also has a brake, which it likely does, I suggest leaving it out of gear. An electric is less likely to accidentally get turned on by mistake than my PTO is to get left on when driving off, but bad things happen when it does.
A couple of times I have gotten in a hurry, finished using the winch, spooled up the cable and hooked it to something. Jumped in the cab, put the transfer case in gear, forgotten to take the PTO out of gear, dropped the transmission in drive and started off.
Only to hear a loud BANG when the hook got snapped off the cable.
And that was better than the loud Crunch, when I ripped a piece of the winch housing off because I had hooked the hook to the shift lever..........
Then there was my friend with the electric winch on his nice new Silverado.
We were driving along, when a piece of paper blew off the seat and into the floorboard on the driver's side. We were on a dirt road with nobody coming, so he just leaned down and grabbed the paper while I held the wheel.
He straightened up, and both of us looked at the other and asked " whats that noise?"
A second later, the end of his nice shiny chrome bumper rose up briefly over the hood and disappeared back down. He hollered " THE WINCH!" and slapped the inside switch on the bottom of the dash back down.
It seems that the last time he used it, he hooked the hook to the inside end of the front bumper and left the winch in gear. We had mounted the inside remote toggle switch on the lower part of the dash so it would be unobtrusive, and he had bumped it with his arm.
We moved the switch later, after we found a new bumper to replace the one that was partially sucked into the winch.........
That is my preferred method in the field. Whenever I bought a new spool of cable I always did the first loading with heavy tension and careful wrapping. During the year, if the used amount was not too much, I often just rewound it by hand. Using my drag system for the end of the hunting season for long term storage. But some years the pulls were long and often.
Those times my system got used more often because it was easier than leaning back for 150 feet of slow walking.
Your wrapping job looks fine. I would only rewrap it as a first time thing to make sure you have all the slack and space out. After the first wrapping, if you keep it looking that well after each pull, the cable will last a lot longer.
One thing, my big PTO winch has a mechanical brake that is automatically applied to the spool when it is taken out of gear. Not designed for or strong enough to prevent you from pulling the cable off, just enough so that the spring tension of the cable does not cause it to unspool when out of gear.
As a result, I am able to leave the winch out of gear for safety's sake.
If yours also has a brake, which it likely does, I suggest leaving it out of gear. An electric is less likely to accidentally get turned on by mistake than my PTO is to get left on when driving off, but bad things happen when it does.
A couple of times I have gotten in a hurry, finished using the winch, spooled up the cable and hooked it to something. Jumped in the cab, put the transfer case in gear, forgotten to take the PTO out of gear, dropped the transmission in drive and started off.
Only to hear a loud BANG when the hook got snapped off the cable.
And that was better than the loud Crunch, when I ripped a piece of the winch housing off because I had hooked the hook to the shift lever..........
Then there was my friend with the electric winch on his nice new Silverado.
We were driving along, when a piece of paper blew off the seat and into the floorboard on the driver's side. We were on a dirt road with nobody coming, so he just leaned down and grabbed the paper while I held the wheel.
He straightened up, and both of us looked at the other and asked " whats that noise?"
A second later, the end of his nice shiny chrome bumper rose up briefly over the hood and disappeared back down. He hollered " THE WINCH!" and slapped the inside switch on the bottom of the dash back down.
It seems that the last time he used it, he hooked the hook to the inside end of the front bumper and left the winch in gear. We had mounted the inside remote toggle switch on the lower part of the dash so it would be unobtrusive, and he had bumped it with his arm.
We moved the switch later, after we found a new bumper to replace the one that was partially sucked into the winch.........
