Hey all!
Ike: That is a pretty damned cool idea!
Pirate: I wear loose jeans, but they aren’t as loose as khakis or slacks, so I put some effort into making a wench ADS on your design that was as stealthy as possible. It’s the same design, really, except…
First cut your two pieces of velcro for the main wench strap, but cut them 3” or 4” shorter than the original wench plans call for. When you have these two velcro strips, which are 2” wide, cut down the middle of each so that you have strips 3/4” or 1” wide. This will make our final wench product only 3/4” or 1” wide.
Next, before you stick the two pieces together, get the wench you use for hanging and note where the nylon strap connects to the velcro. Line this up with one piece of your thin velcro and place your new nylon strap right there. Put it right onto the adhesive of the velcro strip, but make sure the ends are 1/4” to 3/8” closer together than on your hanging wench (for reasons that will be clear in a bit).
Now put the two velcro pieces together as normal. The result is the main double-sided velcro piece of your wench except half as massive (or less) and thinner since the nylon strap is sandwiched between the velcro instead of additional velcro bits holding it onto the outside.
What else? Cut your foam pads to size (the grippers), and put the small velcro bits on them as you would normally. Now get a new exacto knife, or a really good utility knife, and carefully split the gripper in half so that it is only half as thick. This will remove the “grippy” textured surface, but that’s ok since it turns out that the cut product is still really grippy. I had to practice a few times, but it’s not hard. We’ve just saved an additional 1/4” in thickness!
Why did I do these things? I figure the most tension appropriate for an ADS (I’m new, I may be wrong!!!) works out to 3# or 5# or something like that. Too small a weight to concern ourselves with an “indestructable” wench. This allows me to make almost every dimension smaller, usually by half. Even the length of the double-sided velcro piece is significantly shorter for three reasons:
1) This wench is thinner than an ordinary one, so it takes less length to go around in the first place,
2) With the nylon strap on the insides of our wench strap, the velcro makes full contact all the way around (it doesn’t have to go over the nylon strap in two places). So we don’t need as much overlap,
3) At least for me, much less wrap is required since the tension is so much less than actual hanging.
Now when I put my jeans on I have a true stealth ADS.
y’all take care,
busted bus