Friction Rings

You may be surprised to learn there’s nothing new about the half-doughnut-half-sheave-shaped bits of aluminum known as low-friction rings. In fact, low-friction rings, in one form or another, go back thousands of years in the form of the traditional lignum vitae wooden single deadeye. They have more recently been brought up to date for the simple reasons that they’re cheap, lightweight—and they work.

If you haven’t come across a low-friction ring, or have discounted them as race-tech gadgetry, think again. Made of lightweight hard-anodized aluminum and available for line sizes from ⅛ in to 1in (with external diameters from ½ in upward), they can, in fact, serve a multitude of uses.

Around the outside is a rounded groove much like that of a traditional sheave. However, in the case of a low-friction ring, the running line feeds through the hole in the middle, which has been rounded in all directions to allow the line (or lines) to pass through as smoothly as possible. The outside groove, on the other hand, is used to secure the