About Hook
Antal's "Hook" is an open, low friction ring with a spliced Dyneema loop for attaching it to a pad eye or some other anchor point.
The Hook can be easily hooked on a spinnaker, genoa, or gennaker sheet as a barber hauler - to provide very strong but lightweight line control.
The hook itself is made of hard black anodized aluminium incorporating a safety spring to prevent the line from accidentally dropping out.
The Dyneema spliced loop has a "dog bone" on one end for quick and secure attachment around a padeye without having to take the time to tie a knot or create a girth hitch. Note that the round padeye shown in the image is not included.
The Soft Link Family
Low friction Rings are the heart of Soft Links. Simple, lightweight Rings - together with more sophisticated products such as Solid Rings and Hooks - have revolutionized the way we design fixed and running rigging on sailboats as well as other vessels. Thanks to perfect polishing, Soft Links provide extremely low friction. Due to their simplicity, Soft Links have lower prices and require absolutely no maintenance.
The Universal Solution
Soft Links' main characteristic is their versatility. They can be used as barbers or lazy jacks. Use them for backstay bridles instead of a sheave, or for 8:1 control systems. They can be used for reefing, or 3D genoa adjusting. And obviously, they function as simple, lightweight blocks in many different applications.
Extremely High Loads
The main characteristic of Antal Soft Links - stand-alone low friction rings, rings with loops, solid rings, hooks, Dyneema loops, and dog bones - is that the Dyneema loop carries the entire load.
Maximizing the advantages of Dyneema's low stretch and extreme strength, weight is reduced along with size and maintenance. In addition, there is no breaking load concern, other than that of the Dyneema loop.
Safe Working Load
Calculating the SWL (safe working load) of a product usually involves testing the breaking load of each part and dividing by 2 -- to provide a "safety factor" of two.
In the case of Soft Links, with their Dyneema structure, Antal uses an increased and very conservative safety factor of 3, in order to take into account the possibility of some wear of the Dyneema line causing a small decrease in the strength of the Soft Link.
In other words, if Hook #16 has a recommended SWL of 2200 kg, it means that the loop itself won't break until it has been stress to about 6600 kg (14,500 lb).
