A little history on the Safe-Line wire rope clamps


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Posted by Clint Dixon [74.206.62.94] on Monday, November 16, 2009 at 19:19:39 :

The four-piece cable clamp design, that Milo posted below about finding on ebay, was patented on December 17, 1940. The patent was granted to a Mr. Clarence C. Gallagher of Detroit Michigan. He applied for the patent earlier on January 22 of that year. There was no assignee listed on the patent, so Mr. Gallagher appears to have invented the clamp on his own accord, and not as an employee or representative of any particular company.

1944 sales literature shows the Gallagher design as being under manufacture by the National Products Company of Detroit, Michigan. It was referred to as the "Safe-Line Clamp" and was advertised as being used by various winch manufactures, all branches of the military, mining industries, steel companies, etc.

The 3-piece clamps currently available still wear the SLC label. I do not know when the design was simplified to a 3-piece, or when the 7/16" size was discontinued.

I have a 4-piece Safe-Line clamp on each of my trucks winch cables. My cables are 7/16" diameter and my clamps are labeled 1/2". I have never had a cable slip through one of these oversized clamps though I am not endorsing using anything other than the correct size. I weave a flemish eye into the ends of my cables. A properly woven flemish eye actually does more of the holding work than a conventionally clamped cable.

I also have a 4-piece Safe-Line in 3/8" size. It is a chore to fit it on a 3/8" cable (which is probably correct as per design). With the 3/8" cable woven into a flemish eye, the clamp is next to impossible to fit even when clamped in a 4-inch bench vise and using 24-inch pipe wrenches on the clamp nuts. I would suspect that one would find it at least as difficult to assemble a 7/16" 4-piece Safe-Line clamp onto a 7/16" cable if first woven with a flemish eye.

It would be nice to reproduce these clamps in 7/16" size for display on our trucks, but the interior surfaces of the originals are actually "coined" to precisely fit the individual wires wrapped in the strands of the cable. There is a little more there than meets the eye.

Junior





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