Hi, I’m Alfred and I’m a….

…winchaholic!
Today I played with my latest winch purchase.

Trewhella Brothers built some amazing winches and from what I can discover the Monkey (stump puller) winch was very well thought of in both timber work and heavy haulage. However, its one failing that preventing it from being adopted by the military was that it can not safely release a load without the same amount of muscle power used to apply it.

This is my first Trewhella Monkey Winch. It is rusted absolutely solid and no amount of WD40 and heat has so far managed to free it up.

The Wallaby winch was its replacement with an unloaded release mechanism. This made it safe to release a load without the winch rope running away.

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The Wallably is a little lighter in weight then the Monkey and more compact. It does, however, use a similar winch drum and ratcheting mechanism and so should have an equivalent reserve of hauling ability.

My first task after unloading it from the car was a quick inspection. I good squirt of WD40 all over the moving parts ensure it all moved freely. The cable was loose on the drum and tangled so I worked it all around, freewheeling the drum, and pulling out the rope. The rope is about 10m long with special hook on the end.

I then rewound the rope, checking it as I went, and also checking the ratcheting mechanism all functioned as it should. All was good. There were no loose of damaged strands  in the rope, and just some expected kinks at the hook end.

The huge hook is rather special, it allows the hook to be safely hooked back onto the rope without damage. This is not usually recommended with wire rope and an ordinary hook.

So, what am I going to do with the Wallaby?

It will be used where I need a strong winch for tree felling, bragging rights, ornamentation…
Well, you know how it is!
It will also be useful for identifying the rusted parts of the ratchet on the Monkey Winch which are beyond saving, should replacements need to be made up.

Update (Feb 2022):

For those interested, I still haven’t managed to free up the rusty Monkey winch. WD40 and heat haven’t made any difference and I am wondering if it is a partially lost cause. In the meantime I did also find a second Wallaby winch and so I now own that too!

But in order to satisfy my desire to own one that works I managed to buy another Monkey winch.

I have also found that I have had a Trewhella snatch (pulley) block hidden away for a long time. It is rusty but sound and I hope to be able to clean that up and make it free running.

I then found that it should come with the cable gripper (cable shortening wedge) and a coil of cable. This is what the gripper looks like and I want to find one. No luck so far, sadly.

This shows how the winch, pulley, and gripper is used with a length of pull cable. It is from the booklet linked to at the bottom of the page.

For the pull cable that would be used with the gripper I will remove the cable from the rusted Monkey Winch. It will have the right hook on the end and save me buying a massive cable.

I am still getting a lot of interest in this post and I really know very little more about these winches other then what I can find online.
You can find some more information at this link about the use of the Trewhella Monkey Winch. This is where most of my knowledge came from.

I am not an expert on Monkey winches (or any other winches), nor do I buy or sell them. I only collect for my own interest and hobby use.

I am happy to chat about them, and to learn more about Trewhella Brothers and their tree pulling equipment, but I don’t have a lot of time due to work. Also aside from that I am not really much help with them.

Thank you.