Breaking Splices, Sewn Eyes and Other Strange Things.

Interesting to see the epoxy expirement

My guess is that if a rope manufacturer made a trip here to St Paul and talked with the adhesive engineers at 3M they’d find a way of gluing an eye in a rope that would be strong and durable. If they did it would be such heresy that the acceptance would take years. Some people are still skeptical of splices and sewn eyes.
 
@Tom Dunlap - I remember years ago while doing testing with Spiderwire and PowerPro and the "Pro's" were doing testing on similar machines. They were testing Knott strength, adding CA (superglue), epoxy, different knots, Melted plastic machines, crimps and combinations of each.

In the end, they were finding that the adhesives/ epoxy's were the worst since they all penetrated and made the line unmovable in those areas thus causing the most stress and breaking. Now there are many different formulas and characteristics of modern epoxies. Mileage may very.

This was all done on the fishing line side. Not much experience with the epoxied eyes. My DMM Captain kit did come with what looked like a sewn eye and the threads covered in epoxy art some other hard substance. Maybe it was liquid whipping?
 
Instead of a hard epoxy, I wonder if a matrix say something similar to the sidewall of a tire would be effective on a sewn splice. Seems you would need a great deal of flexibility, strength and toughness to be able to not only pass a pull test....but to deal with all the potential abuses (impacts, bending, abrasions) an eye can see during proper/improper use in years of service.
 
I’m thinking of a flexible adhesive that’s pressure injected into the two legs of the splice like a Butterball turkey. My vision is a lot like the fiber mat in fiberglass or carbon fiber being the rope and the flexible adhesive being the resin to hold the fibers in place

My guess is that someone has already tried this with large diameter ropes already.
 
Tom,
4-5 years ago Calgary had a huge snowstorm in September (Snow-tember - leaves still on) and busted up a lot of trees. I spent a couple of summers after this on and off splinting spruces etc. and even tying/ guying some upright till they got back on their own feet so to speak. I was running out of old ropes so cobbled up a bunch rigged with sewn splices (yeah, Nick I know . . . ) and 'cause ropes were left up sometimes for 6 months, I covered the sewing with Freesole - it's pasty polyurethane goop, similar to stiching coating on the CE Lanyard sewn eye stitching. I never had one let go, even with some large thunderstorms/ hail storms those summers while the ropes were up. Didn't keep the ropes and spices but if you're looking for flexible brush on goop, that'd be my choice. The UV exposure and weathering these ropes got was brutal, but the splices looked unaffected.
https: //www.atmosphere.ca/product/332091346.html?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI8frH-dS23wIVXSCtBh25FgjEEAYYAiABEgJnFvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds#332091346=332091348
Maybe try it out.
 
My theory on all of the adhesives currently is this. If you pay attention to the way a rope 'works' or breaks. You can see that there has to be flexibility built into every part of the rope. Before they break, you can see the elongation in knots, splices, etc. Using the recent break video as an example, the majority of the ropes broke at the eye splice on the cover buried into the core area. When splicing and then burying, that tends to be the stiffest/ hardest part of the rope.
 
When it comes to flexibility my feeling is that the material used to join the two should have the same amount of stretch or lack there of. Sewing with a Kevlar thread, even though it is much stronger, has much less stretch than nylon or polyester, that creates its own issues. Getting the core and cover to share the load and stretch evenly is also an issue. Seems to present issues when a braided cover is over parallel strands in the core. Some look at rope grabs as a danger but I see the same thing often with a knot as it will cinch the cover, break it, then the core slides out of the knot and breaks. I suspect the people designing ropes know all of these things but because of legal issues or marketing we don't get it or we get the sales version. We want a good static rope, (strong core with less stretch) but we want it to feel good on the outside, more flex. In my testing it seems that with a good splice or sewn eye the break will occur at a major change in the construction or where there is a constriction of the fibers just like with a knot. This is just touching the surface I'm sure and has been a huge discussion when it comes to rope bridges. Notice I have not even mentioned bend radius which is probably the first thing we think of with rope strength. I have gone to a good old 16 strand Arbormaster for my bridge because it is simple, strong and what you see is what you get. Sorry for rambling.
 
Not sure I'd want to use Freesole or like on a solely glued splice but I think Richard it might be worth a try on a sewn splice perhaps. Not just applied to the stitching but brushed into or flowed into the space between the two rope strands. Might also be worth trying saturating the stitching as above and then applying shrink tube to squeeze the glue into the rope further. This stuff stays flexible but is tough as nails - how tough? Used it to "re-sole" parts of the soles of a pair of old combat boots before hiking around on Iceland volcanos (still hot cinder materials). Boots survived including the freesoled areas. The stuff is amazing (yet flexible) and is still on the boot soles. Wonder if it would give an increase in splice strength over unglued versions?
Cheers all.
 
ghostice said:
Not sure I'd want to use Freesole or like on a solely glued splice but I think Richard it might be worth a try on a sewn splice perhaps. Not just applied to the stitching but brushed into or flowed into the space between the two rope strands. Might also be worth trying saturating the stitching as above and then applying shrink tube to squeeze the glue into the rope further. This stuff stays flexible but is tough as nails - how tough? Used it to "re-sole" parts of the soles of a pair of old combat boots before hiking around on Iceland volcanos (still hot cinder materials). Boots survived including the freesoled areas. The stuff is amazing (yet flexible) and is still on the boot soles. Wonder if it would give an increase in splice strength over unglued versions?
Cheers all.
Click to expand...
vs ShoeGoo?
 
Thank you for sharing these videos, Richard. I think video documentation of these pull tests provides valuable information regarding the possible failure reason.

In your tests, you did use sewing an eye on the other end of the spliced test objects. Sometimes the stitching end failed before the spliced eye. Do you consider, that you stitching could have been somewhat better and i general to be supperior to the spliced eye?

Yesterday i came about some other public sources of information with pull test results. They are made by Evans Starzinger. Evans did publish several test on his (and his wifes) website, but this site is now active anymore. But the information is still to be found on the web.archive.org: https://web.archive.org/web/20160715154948/http://www.bethandevans.com:80/load.htm

Some of the same test and some more is to be found on this sailors forum thread: http://forums.sailinganarchy.com/index.php?/topic/154025-ropeknotsplice-load-testing/&

/Viggo
 
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