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I have no doubt they are still out there. I haven't seen any in my industry in a very long time. It's also possible our area specifically doesn't use them.
even though I’d been using a hi lift most of my life a jack slipped and I got a cracked molar an fractured jaw. still the most usefull jack in the world. my job banned them years before I started there but we still have them hid out because wykyk.
I bought one of those to use off road for recovery and after watching a friend come close to having his head ripped off by his I realized I'd rather turn in my "man card" and just admit I will never use it.
We called those killer jacks. I was told to be very careful with them. Great tool if you're careful and not close to the most dangerous thing on a farm.
that’s no shit! I once had a pto rip my shirt off. I didn’t even think I was that close to it. I Also work construction and laugh about how osha would cry on the farm. from construction I have made my farm work safer by shutting the equipment off to make connections and de energizing hydraulics etc. safety glasses and earplugs. my neighbors laugh but I have seen what simple mistakes can do.
Yes, that pto was dangerous as shit amd made the killer jack look like a kids toy. Was warned about loose clothing around those and it would rip my shirt off if I was lucky or it would take me and the shirt if I wasn't.
Not to mention augers and how we would get in the grain buggies to get all the grains out. Hope you don't ever slip and get foot or hand caught in it.
damn forgot about grain augers. but buggies and trailers, had a friend let his child up on the trailer walk. he turned around and kid was gone. after panicked looking he opened the bottom slide and the kid came out! basically drowned in grain. the lack of o2 led to brain damage.
Had a great great grandfather who had his arm ripped off getting it caught in machinery. Then got his leg, crushed in a logging accident. Spent most of his life with one arm and one leg. Gotta be careful dude.
My dad had one go auto on him while he was using it, and it chewed up the meaty part of his hand below the thumb. He's lucky it wasn't a deeper "bite" or he would have lost his thumb.
However, there is something very satisfying about feeling the leverage when tightening or releasing these. It’s like it meshes with your brain waves just right and it feels good.
If you're binding in such a way that you can possibly lose a finger, you're probably not using the tool correctly... and likely not tight enough.
A correctly tight snap binder will require a bar for anyone other than the Hulk, and a bar gets your hands away from pinchy things... gets your face away from striky things when releasing as well.
Boomer binders are only dangerous now because most people are either stoned, on meds, half drunk / hungover or just plain stupid or all of the above. I love binders!
I've officially been an old fart since my grandfather had me pick up the tab in the coffee shop with his old farts club.
The ritual to decide who was paying everybody flips a coin. They each show their heads or tails all the tails flip again until only one person is flipping tails. I was the last one flipping, and I payed for the table's coffee. The rest covered the tip. I've been an official old fart ever since. That was when I was 16.
Not really extremely dangerous. They’re called chain binders. I use them to tie down machinery on a trailer with a chain. I use the ratchet ones as well just because they’re more forgiving on the tightness of the chain. The hooks fit over one link of a chain and the lever pulls/tightens the chain.
Only women and frail men should use the ratchet style. Slap binders are the best and nothing will change my mind about that. I haul equipment around almost daily and I haye the ratchet ones, I managed to swap them all out but one, and if there is a loose chain by the time I hit the job site its usually that one. They are junk (while they do do thier job quite well i just hate them) I can never get the right tension on them the first go, I can with the slap binders though.
Got a BIG ol’ scar from one of these throwing my arm into the edge of a big silver culvert that I was taking off a trailer. Got to see all the layers of the skin to the muscle. That hurt, but nothing compares to when the doctor shoved two fingers inside the wound checking for debris. That made my spine hurt, it hurt so bad.
They're only dangerous if used incorrectly.... the correct bar for getting them latched will easily release them while giving you stand-off, and the binder handle will eject from the bar by design, with the bar too heavy to do more than a slow swing out of the way.
But yes, used without knowledge and care, they can be anywhere from dangerous to useless.
There are very few things that I prefer a ratchet binder over a snap binder for.
Chain binders! I used to chain down the backhoe onto to our carrier truck with these. Definitely involved some skill, especially if they twisted in transit and you couldn’t get a safe purchase to release. Switched to the ratchet style as soon as they came out
I use these on a regular basis for chaining down mini excavators and skiddies to trailers for transporting to job sites. They are only dangerous if your inexperienced or not the brightest.
Let a cheater pipe slip out of my hand while tightening one and launched the pipe at my dad's forehead at what seemed like "mach-oh fuck I'm gonna get my ass beat" (he never beat me so not sure why i thought that, but i was 15 lol). Amazingly all I got was a "FUCK, just get the chain off and let's get out of here" through gritted teeth. Haha, don't think we ever talked about it again.
The most elegant mechanical design, I’ve been fascinated with these my whole life! Having spent a couple decades using them to tie down heavy equipment, yeah, they can be a handful.
Many years ago I saw a truck driver using one accidentally launch a short length of steel pipe a ridiculous distance across a carpark and through the front windscreen of a parked car.
One of my coworkers snapped one of these closed with a 6ft cheater bar and three guys hanging off the end of it. Was a minor shop adventure figuring out how to open it again without sending something through the roof or someone to the hospital.
That's where these Snipes (which I guess are referred to as "Combination Winch Bars") come in. The end is shaped so you can slip it over the handle and put force in one direction; when the handle continues on after passing the highest point, it will pivot inside the snipe instead of snapping wrists or faces. You still gotta hold onto the thing but it's much easier to put in enough force to disengage without sticking your face anywhere near the thing.
I still don't like them though and go for ratchet binders instead.
Today I learned what that box end is for. A shame nobody on site had the tool or the training. This wasn't in a shipping context, just someone strapping an oversize hydraulic cylinder to a bench. Tbh, not sure where he even dug up the binders. Probably dug them out from behind the ratcheting ones and figured the harder it was to set up the more secure it was.
Shipping and hauling is the most frequent use of chain binders, but really any application where you need a chain super-fuckin-tight can use a chain binder. I've even seen 'em used in barn framing to hold the structure square while they put up siding. Here's a nice Demo https://youtu.be/ZwvPLMydqLY&t=116
As a snipe or handle extension, maybe; assuming the handle you're trying to pull will fit inside the box. Chain boomers also tend to have a slight bulge at the very end of the handle (like the middle one in OPs image) that locks into these snipes while still allowing it to slip out when then snap shut/open.
But the other end, that little crooked "finger", is the main part of this tool used to tighten trailer strap ratchets. And why these things go for $50-100. But they're solid as hell and can take quite a bit of torque.
I opened one like that holding a dozer down. Pipe uppercutted me and split my lip and broke my nose and flew about 100ft in the air. I was 1/2 inch from death. I don’t fuck with slack binders anymore
This thing was fucking stuuck. Ended up using a longer bar extended over top into a slightly safer area to crack it loose. Made an ungodly sound when it cammed over but at least we all made it out alive.
Exactly, as wonderful as Reddit and the internet is something’s if you need to go there to find out “what it is “ it’s best to leave alone , but hey good luck there buddy
We were lashing down missiles once and a coworker straddled the chain as he tightened these 😂😂 smacked him right in the you know where.
There is an art to getting those nice and snug and not getting smacked.
Better be careful, I had one snap open on me while I was sniping it closed with a spare pipe one time, cracked me in the arm something awful. The bruise was pretty amazing.
My dad used to wrench them closed with a 6 foot cheater bar and then hold it closed while I ran up and used baling wire to wrap the end to hold it closed. Still safer than putting a couple hundred pounds of air in a “split Rim” trunk wheel.
If you have one of these and a chain it's really not very hard to figure out how to use them. I used them often during my high school summer job, the most training I got for them was seeing others already in use and shown how to wrap the loose part after the chain was tight. Never had a mishap.
They are binders for load scurement and for use with transport grade (grade 70) chains. These are the worse versions, and most people use ratcheting binders now as they are safer. The way these are used is pretty simple. You hook one end up on a chain, then the other end hooked up near the end of the binder. Then, you pull the lever across it to shorten the chain distance and thus tighten it. The problem with these is that they take a lit of force to actuate, and when they pop, it can be pretty violent. Most people that still use this kind slip a bar over them to get their loads tighter and take less force for them to operate.
These are chain binders (un)affectionately called Wrist Snappers. When tying something down with chains, particularly on a flat deck trailer (though I've seen them used for other applications where you need a chain held tight) you would latch your chain to the trailer through hooks or slots then gather up the lose chain in one spot and fit these binders to both leads. The Red binder shown here is closest to the 'open' position where the hooks are farthest apart. Then you would grab the handle and press it over to the opposite lead of chain and it would pull it's two hooks together sinching the chain tight.
At which point you Really Should lock the handle to the chain via that little hole in the end to keep it from bouncing loose. When you want it loose again you pull the handle in the opposite direction where it would snap open once you passed the pivot point and it would wrench itself out of your hand if you were holding it with a closed fist.
These are a little finicky to use and only moderately adjustable, though these particular specimens don't look like the hooks feed in or out via a short length of threaded rod. More modern chain binders have several inches of threads on both sides and you simply spin a ratcheting handle to tighten or loosen and don't require you to put everything you have into pulling the chains as tight as possible before slipping the binder on.
Finally something I knew what it was. In the oil fields of west Texas we had a unit to scan pipes being pulled out of oil wells and we carried it in a trailer locked down with chains and these kept the chains tight enough that it wouldn’t move around. Had completely forgotten about these. Memory unlocked
Chain binders. Used then a lot when I was running steel up and down the east coast. Usually used a load bar to tighten them down then wrapped a Bungie cord around the handle just so I could tell if it backed off or not. They are not cheap, for the good ones at least. I'd see if you can sell them, don't give them away
My favorites tying heavy equipment on trucks. 3' of 1 1/2" pipe for a cheater worked great. Dangerous? Could be. Just have to always repect the energy stored when latched. And keep the pipe under control.
I dropped my loaded deck in our yard late and decided to unload in the morning. That included releasing the binders and chains. Next morning my pipes laying on the ground by one released binder. I heard two days later,and saw the results, of the lockup guy trying to give me a hand. As he described to me, he two handed the one end. Slipped the other end barely on the handle. When it snapped open, he saw the other end coming at his face and couldn't stop it. Fortunately nothing was broken. Big lump on his cheek. He said for a while it felt like he'd ripped his face open.
He was lucky.
We would call them bear traps. Used them alot 5-10yrs ago. It's for tensioning a chain, similar to a ratchet. The issue is it holds all the energy from pulling the chain, so when it releases its alot of force quickly... In reality you just need to stand clear and understand where it's Gunna pop and be on the other side. If you stand in the way you can get hit hard quickly. Most people prefer ratchet because it's safer and easier to use. The one downside is ratchets are prone to have issues from debris getting in and impacting it, also winter can cause water or dirt to freeze in them. Bear traps don't have those problems.
To the people saying how dangerous they are…😂
You all have to be kidding, or have never done anything like work in your life. Those over center binders are used everyday (logging around here) without incident. You stick a pipe in the end of them for leverage and wham bam thank you ma’am lock the chain down or unlock it.
your kidding right? chain tensioners or “binders”. used to tighten chains to hold loads down on trucks etc. they appear 3/8” chain binders in pics and at the local stores $40-$80 depending on quality and at farm auctions $30 and up. the chain to go with them is worth quite a bit as well.
Jaw breakers
Snappers
Crunches
Many names for these but they’re meant for tightening chain on a heavy trailer load
Had to use em when I worked logging for a stint, my anxiety prefers the ratcheting ones
Most of the drivers that I saw using them were using a cheater pipe because otherwise it’s very difficult to lock them down. Once they go over Center to lock, they can snap close quickly, and you may lose your balance and fall. On the other hand when you’re disconnecting them, be sure to keep your head and face and anything else you can out of the way because they are real tight, they will pop open and I’ll take that cheater pipe and whip it at you giving you a nice hematoma on your noggin and maybe a few less teeth 🦷Pretty much so the same thing as everybody else here has been saying. Im just saying 😁
I recommend getting the ratchet type if you’re gonna use chains or if you can, the straps depending on the load. (Sharp loads can cut or chafe the straps.
Lever over chain dogs. More commonly known in the industry as jaw smashers. Effective is used properly, dangerous if not. I wouldn’t use them if you’re an amateur. There’s much safer alternatives on the market such as EV cams or maxibinders. Those chains you found with them will be transport chains, not tow chains
Those dogs are used with straps or chains to tie down loads. Attach as you would a ratchet dog. Instead of using a ratchet to safely create tension, you just pull that lever over and it tightens the tie-down strap or chains. The lever snaps tight because the jaws are offset.
The danger comes from opening them. It takes a lot of effort to lift the lever to release the tension and it will suddenly snap over. If you’re not familiar with this thing and and you are, for instance, in front of it you will get whacked. It can break bones.
A coma-along is a winch. Is is used to straighten machinery, possibly with the addition of heat. It is also used recover a stuck cars and 4x4 etc . A load binder is used to tension a chain to hold stuff down.
So to put in laymen's terms what everyone else is saying. When you chain something to a trailer, like a large object or piece of equipment. You use these to take the slack out of the chains and make the load tight. But they're dangerous. When they're tight, they are spring loaded with extreme pressure. And people have lost teeth when popping them loose! The norm nowadays is a threaded turnbuckle chain binder. And no. They're not worth anything more than a couple dollars. If you could even sell them
Those are board stretchers. Used for when you cut lumber too short and need to stretch it back, up to ½ inch longer. At least that's what my boss told me when I was 17 building houses. He couldn't believe that I couldn't figure out how to set it up or how it worked. Accused me of screwing around and actually got real mad, telling me maybe building houses wasn't for me. Eventually he told me the truth, but he left me scratching my head for a while
Was he ever a trucker? I doubt they are "tow" chains, they are tie down chains and the chain binders are in the pic used to tension the chains. Look at any trailer on the road hauling equipment and you will see how they are used. You will probably find a cheater bar to help lock them as well, I have included a picture of one.
Lever binder, sometime called snap binder or ‘bear trap’. It’s basically like the ratcheting buckle on a roller blade but big and metal and you hook it on a chain.
One on these put me in the hospital when I was 18 working construction. They really aren’t that dangerous just stay out of the way when you open it up…. (Lesson learnt)
I never knew you could get the wind knocked out of you through your leg, until I popped myself in the side of the knee with one of these. Had one that was real tight, and didn't feel like bringing out the cheater bar, so i climbed up on the drop deck, stood over the binder and found out it doesn't always go the way you think it's gonna go...
Truckers and Farmers use them to hitch up their pants so they can fasten their braces... suspenders, to some.
.
There's something about long days of sitting in a truck cab or tractor seat and finding over time your britches just get harder to hoist up to reach the suspenders.
I think the red one is most likely for Church going pants?
The proper name is "lever binder" or "snap binder". Many commenters have incorrectly stated that they are used in "towing". There is no legitimate use for binders of any type in towing anything. Binders, both lever and ratchet, are used to lighten chains, most commonly used in securing cargo to a flatbed or step deck or RGN trailers.
We use them at my work all of the time!!! They work great if your not a complete idiot and use them correctly!!! If you don't know how to properly use tie down equipment then maybe the trades aren't the best place for you to work!!! Of course im using the word "you" as a general term, not pointing anyone out specifically, just facts.
Chains and dogs for securing steel I beams and all sorts of steel like plate steel.
They use them because there is a small risk that straps will cut through so traditionally these are classed as stronger/safer.
But if you are pulling the arm down and it slips out of your hand it might knock your head off when it flirts upwards 🤣
We callem binders, and they are dangerous as f***. I caught one of the boys soaking one in WD-40. DONT DO THAT! The rust is engineered to hold it closed while in operation haha. Only trust a rachet binder/boomers, these ones pop open if there isn't enough or if there's is too much tension present on the hook and chain
hold-downs. used to tighten chain using leverage. Fiddle with them and you'll probably see how they work. On hook goes to trailer edge, whatever you're tightening the load to, the other goes to the eye of chain that you can just lever down. Once levered down it stays until you carefully lever it up.
I find it hilarious how many different names people know these by, I wonder if it's a regional thing. Growing up in alberta-canada many years ago we called em boomers. The ratchet types seem to have taken over these days, not sure if they were regulated out or people just stopped using em.
Those are called binders used to tighten heavy loads like tractors and machinery on flatbeds. I have used them with no troubles ans my buddy uses them a lot with no troubles. You need to know how to use the correctly. Of course we are mid 60's boomers and grew up with such devices.
Chain boomers made to tighten chain and secure loads. Dangerous if you are standing in front of it when you release the tension. Pretty safe if you’re off to the side. If people used a cheater to tighten it, they should release it with a cheater to avoid getting hit in the face.
Chain booms - used to tension chains securing a load. These are an old design and can be kinda dangerous for the uninitiated. They open with quite a lot of force when removing. It’s not a big deal if you’re expecting it, but there are better options available these days.
You see them in the country a lot. Heard stories of them popping but we never had issues with them. We used them to tie down building equipment and also at times on a tractor in the center of our buildings we were putting up as a bracing system. We used the ratchet ones as well
Toggle lock chain tensioners.
They are used for tying down large and heavy equipment. These are no longer used due to their dangerous design. When releasing they can move at extremely high speeds and cause injury or death.
A screw and ratchet system is used nowadays.
My dad used these when he tied down his logging truck loads. He called them motherfuckers cuz that what he always said while using them. But they are for cinching down the chains that wrap log together so the load stays together.
Binders. I remember using those. We have the ratcheting type now. I remember a coworker flinging a cheater bar right into the side glass of a brand new backhoe. That's considered lucky with a mishap like that. Damn Im old.
Those are trip binders for tightening chains down to secure a load. They have fallen out of favor for ratcheting models. These can even be dangerous if you’re not careful with them. I’d suggest getting rid of them.
Growing up we called them "come-alongs" (dont know if thats the proper name for them, thats how ive always known them) almost saw a guy get cut in half using one of them trying to secure a tractor to a flatbed
Just like any other tool learn to use it correctly and it works well. Missuse it and you could cause injury or death. Respect your tools and never take them for granted. I still use these with no problem. They are chain binders and work well. However, the screw type are safer. Where as these are much faster
My grandfather owned a machinery moving company for many years and used these daily. He used to yell at to me retrieve them from the toolbox at the back of the truck. They are called a thing-a-ma-jiggy
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I'm from Alaska, these were used pretty regularly with chains to secure equipment or vehicles on trailers. You definitely need to understand how to use them properly.
I think every young guy should have to use them as right of passage. That and a farm jack. I didn’t use these a lot but damm sure respected the them. Still see trucks running with them.
Chain binders. I used to use them when driving fatbed to secure steel coils, and other heavy objects. The hooks fit around a link at each end and then pull the lever down to tighten it.
These aren’t much good without the chains that go with them. They work quite well when used properly. I use mine often when hauling my John Deere tractor or Mini-X on a flat trailer.
I used to hate those things. If you have to use them use a snipe to release them, chunk of pipe that fits over the handle. Makes it easier to not have them explode in your face.
Back in 1973 when I worked in a steel mill in Pennsylvania a driver undid one on a 3-4000# bundle of steel rods.
They found him " under " the bundle much shorter than he was !!
Got news for you, those weren’t tow chains that you found with those load binders they were tie down chains and I will bet that they are probably all 20 or 24 feet long.
Good ol' boomers. We still use them as binding for wrappers on long log trucks. They will knock you the fuck out if your head is in the way when you're opening them.
Come alongs, chain tighteners, binders, they increase tension on a chain with leverage and can absolutely hurt you when they come undone if you’re in the way.
Called chain binders. Use a pipe as a handle extension to both tighten and to release chains. Use the ratchet type but remember to keep them lubed for easy use.
Those are chain binders. As others said, for tightening chains, like securing a load on a flatbed semi. They are only as dangerous as the person using them is.
Why are so many people calling them jacks? They are binders, people also call them boomers. They are used to tension chains when you are hauling heavy loads.
Good ol chain binders!!! Did this when transporting things on a trailer that need to be chained down! Careful cuz they’ll bounce back and break your face
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