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Come-Along (Ratchet Lever Puller)

CorrectedAn independent reviewer read this entry and found corrections. They have been applied to the text, and the reviewer re-checked the correction that mattered most for safety and found it done; the others have not been re-checked yet. The list at the end is the record of what changed.

Field sheet · the bench card for this tool →

Identity

Name: Come-along (also: ratchet cable puller, cable puller, wire stretcher, ratchet hoist). "Come-along" is overloaded trade language: depending on speaker and market it may mean a drum cable puller, a rope or strap puller, a lever chain hoist, or a related hand winch. A "lever hoist" is a formal standards category (ASME B30.21), and a "chain hoist" is a related hand-chain tool; see Lineage-Misuse below.

Family / category: Rigging and mechanical-advantage pulling tools: the hand-powered, ratchet-and-pawl cousin of the powered winch and the continuous-cable griphoist (Tirfor-type).

One-line: A hand-operated ratchet puller with a winding drum worked by a pivoting lever, drawing in wire rope (or, in some models, strap or chain) a short distance per stroke to pull, tension or position a load. Its approved duties vary by exact model: identify the manufacturer and model and follow its marked rated load, manual, load medium, orientation and application limits. Never infer lifting approval, or its absence, from the nickname "come-along." The cited Maasdam Pow'R-Pull manual covers "Lifting or Pulling a Load"; other products sold under the same nickname may be pull-only.

✦ How NOT to Use It

Not-for:

Dangerous:

Damaging:

Beginner-trap:

Lineage-misuse:

Correct Use

Genuinely good at: short-stroke, incremental pulling, tensioning and positioning without a power source, where the load and resistance are known, the anchor and attachments are rated, and the operator can stand outside every failure and movement path: fence-wire tensioning with rated attachments, and positioning or aligning heavy shop objects under control. Lifting only where the exact model is approved for it and the support, rigging and landing are adequate. Vehicle recovery, directional tree work, structural straightening and work on machinery with stored energy are possible with this tool but are gated tasks (see Matching), not ordinary uses.

How to use it well (short version; the workbench holds deep operation; the exact model's current manual governs). For the cited Maasdam Pow'R-Pull unit, the manual supplies the minimum sequence:

Redirects and dampers. A snatch block or sheave changes the system's geometry: it creates additional loaded line segments, a bight or triangle hazard, and block and anchor reactions that can approach the vector sum of both line legs. It does not remove the line of fire; it moves and multiplies it. Every redirect or mechanical-advantage setup needs a competent geometry and force plan. A blanket or mat over the line is at most a supplementary line damper whose effect depends on its mass, placement, line type, geometry and failure mode; it neither contains a failure nor makes it safe to enter the exclusion zone.

✦ Matching

Does (matchable operations): pull, tension, position: short-stroke, incremental, hand-powered pulling along the straight hook-to-hook line the exact model prescribes. Lift only where the selected model is explicitly approved for lifting. Straighten, drag, recover_vehicle and directional_fell are application tags that require the gates below, not synonyms for ordinary pulling.

Matching requires: exact model identity; marked rated load; approved duty and orientation; usable travel; line medium and condition; anchor and connector ratings; straight hook-to-hook alignment; calculated load and system reactions; a stable load path and landing; inspection state; operator competence; an exclusion zone; and a credible response to binding, loss of control or component damage.

Suits (ordinary): fence-wire tensioning (woven wire, chain-link) with known loads and rated attachments; positioning or aligning heavy shop assemblies on a controlled path; general construction pulling and tensioning within the exact model's limits.

Suits only with gates:

Kit-fit:

Access: a beginner's place is supervised familiarization, or genuinely low-consequence tensioning with known loads and rated attachments. All loaded recovery, tree, structural and lifting work needs trained, competent planning. "Light," "small" and "moderate" are not safety categories: manual effort at the lever, the weight of the load, and the severity of what happens if something lets go are different things. Several forum accounts describe experienced users still getting the rating math wrong.

Revival: a come-along is inexpensive, mechanically simple and needs no power source. It is not maintenance-free: it needs inspection before every use, regular lubrication, periodic recorded inspection and removal from service when damaged (see Correct Use). It rewards patient, incremental work: a maker who has only reached for an electric winch might pick one up to relearn what a load feels like a few inches at a time, inside the same exclusion-zone discipline.

Anatomy

Variations (living)

Trades

Ranching and agriculture (fence tensioning); logging and arboriculture (qualified directional work only); automotive and off-road recovery (planned recovery only); general construction and rigging; shop and fabrication work (positioning; straightening and stuck-part work under the gates above).

Lineage

Ancestors: The block-and-tackle and the simple hand winch supply the underlying mechanical-advantage principle; the come-along packages that advantage into a single self-contained, portable, ratcheting unit that needs no fixed mounting.

Descendants / contemporaries:

History

Origin: a family-attributed ranch story. Felber Maasdam's 1994 obituary (The Steamboat Pilot, Steamboat Springs, Colorado, as reproduced on his Find a Grave memorial, which is a reproduction rather than the newspaper archive itself) says: "Felber and his father Abraham invented the Maasdam Pow-R-Pull, commonly known as a come-a-long, to make their ranch life easier." The family ranched along River Road and Deep Creek near Steamboat Springs. This supports a family-attributed ranch origin at lower evidentiary weight; it does not establish that the Maasdams invented the whole category or the first portable ratchet puller. The often-repeated "c. 1919" date has no patent or documentary anchor found; it traces to an uncited line in the tool's Wikipedia article and is folk-dated.

The 1945 application and the licensing dispute. The Sixth Circuit opinion, American Gage & Manufacturing Co. v. Felber Maasdam, 245 F.2d 62 (6th Cir. 1957), records that Felber's father filed an application in 1945 for "a wire stretching tool for use in building fences," with rights later assigned to Felber; that a July 1, 1946 agreement gave American Gage an "exclusive territorial license to manufacture and sell the Maasdam wire stretcher for one year"; that the Patent Office rejected the application because the invention was "completely anticipated by patents which had expired"; and that, with no further prosecution, it "became abandoned as a matter of law," which Maasdam did not disclose to American Gage. The court reversed the district court's judgment, finding "No proprietary interest of Maasdam, tangible or intangible, was appropriated by American," and directed dismissal of the complaint.

The later granted patents. Separately, Abraham G. Maasdam filed US Patent 2,506,029, "Pulling Device," on January 28, 1947; it was granted May 2, 1950. It is a later granted Maasdam pulling-device patent, not proof of category invention. Its text (read in full for the original entry) describes a body with a rotatably mounted winding drum, a ratchet flange, a pivoting lever with a working pawl, a second pawl holding the drum against retrograde rotation, simultaneous release of both pawls for controlled unwinding, a curved metal guard around the drum "to prevent injury and keep the cable seated," a swivel double hook at one end and a slip hook/clevis at the other, and a wire-gripping cam clamp, and names its intended uses as "a wire stretcher, hoist, winch, load binder... in pulling operations such as drawing a stranded vehicle out of mud or sand, in pulling small stumps." A divisional, US 2,607,095 ("Wire-Gripping Clamp"), was granted August 19, 1952. A later application can carry different claims from a rejected earlier one; the two records describe a documented sequence, not a contradiction. Patent language is not a modern operating manual and not permission for every listed use.

The name past any one company. The current maker (Maasdam Pow'R-Pull, a Pull'R Holding Company brand) markets itself as "MAASDAM - THE ORIGINAL" (2019 catalog); brand copy, not independently verified. "Come-along" is widespread colloquial usage across manufacturers; its trademark status was not established from authoritative records.

An earlier, distinct commercial cousin. A 1935 Popular Science item ("New Jack Enables One Man To Pull Heavy Loads," May 1935) describes a chain-and-cable pulling-jack unit, a separate commercial lineage from the Maasdam line. The original entry's claim that it "lacked the success of the cable-only type units" was not re-verified against the original page in this pass and is not asserted here.

Human Side

Traditions & trades: Ranching and farm fencing (the family-attributed origin trade); logging and tree work; automotive and off-road recovery; general rigging, shop work and construction. It belongs to whoever needs to move something heavy a short distance without a power source, which is also why it ends up in hands without rigging training.

Named hands / practitioner accounts (forum material carried from the original entry; it illustrates real experience and confusion, and does not define technique, approval or setup):

✦ Proof of Existence

References

Forge image needs (logged directly per the standing 2026-09-02 pause on Forge ticket-filing)

The reviewer's corrections (17)

Cite this entry: "Come-Along (Ratchet Lever Puller)." Hewn Tool Library, hewn.build/tools/come-along-ratchet-lever-puller. Reviewed 2026-09-19. Also as plain Markdown.