Soft Shackles

soft_shackles.JPEG

I have saved a fortune on carabiners since I started making soft shackles from paracord. This particular use was hanging backpacks on a luggage cart at a hotel. Both are secured in place by tension on the stopper knot.

This is an example of a whipping knot. Not a great example because I forgot to secure it, and also I forgot the finishing square knot.

A closeup of my flawed whip knot on a pink soft shackle.

For quick deploys with stable tension, I don’t need to lock the soft shackle. If I was attaching the shackle where it would bounce around, then it would need a lock.

This is another shackle that is not secured by anything but the downward tension of the backpack and the placement of the stopper knot on the top of the bar.

The soft shackle has a couple of advantages over the carabiner:

  1. If a carabiner breaks under load, you could have metal flying everywhere, if a soft shackle breaks under load, you might get hit in the face with some paracord. I can tie a diamond knot tight enough to feel incredibly solid, but it’s nothing compared to a piece of metal
  2. compared to a carabiner of the same size, a soft shackle opens wider than a carabiner exhibit 1 a carabiner and a shacke of the same size

exhibit 2 the carabiner can’t latch onto my steering wheel

exhibit 3 the soft shackle on the steering wheel no problem

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