Lifting Shackles - Attaching, Lifting and Rigging

Lifting Shackles are probably the most used attachment in rigging, they pretty much are the bread of the sandwich; they hold everything together, without them there would be just filling and nothing holding the structure together.

Shackles are often used for lifting where the shackle will attached a load to a sling or crane hook, to connect extra slings and even to create a lifting point where safe. There are two types of lifting shackles.

Bow Shackles and Dee Shackles. Bow Shackles feature a bow on the curve of the shackle offering better surface area with the load, sling or hook. These can be purchased with various pins to close the shackle such as a standard screw pin which basically just screws in to prevent release of the sling, load or hook. A safety nut screw type which is the screw type with added safety of a bolt and pin to ensure 100% that the screw cannot be accidentally removed or worked open by vibrations.

Rigging; when theatres and movie sets have things such as lights and trusses hanging from the 'ceiling' this is all done with slings and shackles. There are masses of complete wire rope sling constructions holding these trusses and lights up, but what links them all together is the small simple thing again, a shackle. Rigging companies purchase them in bulk as they can use well over a thousand in one rig!

Attaching loads is made easy, if there is a welded or other suitably attached lifting point but it is too small to directly fit your hoist hook in then there is a simple solution, to feed the pin of a shackle through that is able to fit your hoist hook in it to lift the load how you desired. If you have a load you are lifting with slings but you have several slings that wont fit on your hoist hook all at the same time, add a bow shackle to spread the slings and bring them together, then lifting the shackle with your hoist hook and away you go.

Another advantage of them is that they can turn a horizontal lifting point in to a vertical point. Say you are lifting a load with 4 welded points on each side, it might not lift evenly, add Lifting Shackles to each corner and hoist away with it.