Think about a pot coming up. The bridle needs to come right over the roller to get the point of balance up the tipper to make it easier to pull over. A narrow roller with a frame extending up eack side means you "choke" the bridle, trying to jam the two legs closer together as the pot comes up the tipper. Your winch will bog down badly to where it will stall , and the pot is still so far down the tipper that the leverage is all wrong and you will struggle to get it over. I have one like this--I had to shorten my bridles down to make the Vee shorter, as it were, so that the pot is higher when the bridle  starts to choke. Also be sure that the outside of the roller is level with the outside of the frame, or the rope will constantly jump over the edge and tear itself up over the roller edge, instead of rolling in the centre. I added angle brackets inside mine to overcome that , by mounting the pin through them instead of the frame.  I had to stick with the four inch roller for now, but I will get it cut up and modified to take a ten inch roller before next cray season. 

Pro's use the full width rollers for a reason,and that is that it works. Don't worry about it not centreing as the pot is coming up--the bridle will ensure it centres as it comes over the tipper. What you do need to be mindful of is how high above the tipper pivot point the roller is--too high and the tipper will have a nasty tendency to fly over if you are pulling to one side or another, and this will hurt whoever is in the way. keep the roller as vertically close to the pivot as possible.

 Awesome. That was pretty full on but i think i understand haha.

Thanks heaps ranmar

 I'm thinking of building a few to sell for next season, so will be looking to get some feedback. I've already done some mods for a guy to make his a bit more user friendly. 

ranmar is spot on. Read his post closely.

 The other critical thing is the angle of the rope from the tipper onto the winch.  If its too shallow (ie the tipper is too high or wich too low) the rope will continually override on the winch and jam.

 Get your levels right. I spent a lot of time making mine was level--if they are not, they will be prone to over-wrap and tangle. The line feeding onto the capstan must be level ONTHE BOTTOM of the capstan, as you put your sucessive turns on top of that. Get that level from where the rope comes over the roller to the lower part of the working area of the capstan right and you wont have any issues in that respect. That is one thing I got right.  

If you want to look at this in action, have a look at the video I posted here recently . It's on the fishing videos at fishwrecked.com/forum/some-random-kalbarri-stuff-2016. Go to about 4min 30 sec mark, you will see two pots come in in quick succession and you will see what I mean about the bridles " choking"and really loading up the winch. It's a lot easier to pull a pot over if you can get the front of it right up to the roller instead of havingto do it from 200 mmm or so below the roller.

hope this helps

CSD Designs does a very impressive unit, extremely well built and very good design, like the one in the video it does choke a bit but that is simply the time the deckie needs to pull back on the top of the frame, works extremely well and will be sure to last a long time.

This may be a dumb question, but do tippers work well if you are manually pulling your pots. That is, are you able to pull down on the handle while you are hauling the line by hand?

After my first season of chasing crays Im just working on ways of refining my process...but it doesnt yet involve a capstan/winch. 

 I'm thinking of giving crays   ago this year and don't have the $$$ for a winch,  so I would like to know if a pot tipper would work with no winch also.

 I am also going to install a tipper without a winch until i can afford the latter.  I believe the tipper will certainly assist with the angle of pull and save your back a bit, rather than no tipper where you  need to pull up rather than across.

 The setup of the tipper is even more important. Referring back to the bit about "choking" the bridle, at least with a winch you have some brute force to overcome the issue. You don't have that when pulling by hand. So I would most definitely be going for a full width roller, or at least one which is wide enough for you to get the front of the pot right up before you try to pull it over, or you are really on the wrong side of the curve for leverage.

That is what I was thinking.

Im guessing if the roller is full width, the simple act of pulling on the rope will hopefully get the pot over the tipping point.

Cheers for the info.

Sea-kem, do you know what sort of price you might be charging for your tipper?