shear-legs

The later item seems impossible to find in a treeless place of low hills and snow until a miner named Lawson comes up with the idea of making a tripod of oars, lashings and guyropes — a "shears" (or shear-legs) in sailor lingo — to swing Jan off to his reward.

“Why this longing for life? It is a game which no man wins.” 2008

By exercising much ingenuity in devising shear-legs, he at last succeeded in lifting the masts into their allotted receptacles, where they were firmly secured.

The Wings of the Morning Louis Tracy 1895