Prawn puller for under $100

[Johnnybear]

Here is a picture of the prawn pullers my buddies and I have been building.


Winch: $49.00
Scotty spool: free (find an old manual that nobody wants)
Front pully: $18.00
Power switch: $6.00
Scotty downrigger plug: $7.00
Scrap aluminum: $18.00
Total: $98.00

Labour: all in good fun.

[Johnnybear]

Here is a picture of part of the harvest from 2 Sunday's ago.



Here's a shot of the puller in action. Beauty conditions eh!

[johnes50]

Those prawns look mighty tasty. Looks like handy rig that you could use as a downrigger in a pinch too.

[BlacktailStalker]

Beauty ! Nice work.

[MB_Boy]

Nice work!! We always bring rookies out and use them as a puller and they usually bring their own beer as well.......costs almost nothing!

In all seriousness though that is a pretty slick set up. A buddy of mine was looking to save some $$$ in purchasing one and I will certainly be passing this along.

[guntech]

How does the spool assist? Do you take a wrap around it or is it just friction or a taper to the sides?

[MB_Boy]

How does the spool assist? Do you take a wrap around it or is it just friction or a taper to the sides?

I would think that you would have to put a wrap on it as that line would be much more narrow than those spools.

[Johnnybear]

You have to put a couple of wraps on the spool. We use cheap 1/4" poly rope. You wrap the inside of the spool with hockey tape and it grips pretty good. The one in the photo is one of the first ones we built. We are playing around with arm to get the front pulley level horizontally with the main spool. She's not as fast as the commercially bought ones but does the job nicely. You'd probably get some more speed with a bigger spool but we haven't figured out what to use to keep the cost down.

We buy the winches at Costco but I think Princess Auto has them as well.

[Jager]

Hey Johnnybear

Are you making these to sell or just for personal use? If you're not selling them do you mind sharing how you attach the winch to the spool?

Peter

[Johnnybear]

Jager, I don't build them to sell (not enough time). Just build them to help keep a hobby less expensive. You have to cut the Scotty spool in half with a band saw that has a nice thin blade preferably to get it on the winch spool. You have to drill four holes in the outside hub of the winch spool and mount the Scotty spool to it. It's kind of hard to explain. I'll take some more detailed and close up photos of the procedure as we build the next one and post them. We're building another one this weekend.

I just build them for fun and don't mind sharing information with people who want to try it themselves.