Burying the splice

M

maarten

Location
Aquitaine, France
hi,

so finally we set out to be able to lay an eye splice in a double braided 16 strand rope.

in the beginning we had some hassle to get the fid true ect ect, but with a little practice it is not to bad.

however burying the splice turned out to be some what of a challenge...

in an old crappy peace of rope we managed to get the last bit of the splice neatly tucked away by milking it in by hand. pulling hard but not all the way and then milking again. all smiles
so next day we started of with good spirit and planned to lay eyes in some new velocity...

in the end we managed to get one eye completely buried..

however after all other options where used up we had to brake out a third-hand with two double blocks and all the force of two guys (who have been fooling around outdoors for quite some time) to get the last two cm. inside.

so now we sit all worn out and wonder what can we do to make the burying process some what smoother??

thanx Jaap & Maarten
 
I had similar problems doing eyes in Tachyon, had to do 6 this last weekend. Trashed two of them because the crossover just wouldn't draw up then I realized I'd just changed over to the New England measurements. Before, I was using Brion Toss' measurements and not having much trouble... it was hard at the end but I was getting full buries.

I changed one thing and it started working again.
The New England instructions have you mark the crossover point one short fid from the exit point down the standing part of the rope... about 90mm. I increased that to 115mm and it went from being impossible back to just being really really hard.

The reason I varied from the New England instructions is, I determined that it wasn't just an issue of packing it all in the jacket. I did an experiment by over doing the tapers so the jacket wouldn't be so full. Even with the jacket not fully packed, the splice would barely suck in past the crossover. The pull on the long stretch of core in the standing part was just played out. No matter how much force I put on the eye, it wouldn't suck back in any further.

Once I moved the crossover 25mm further down the standing part of the rope there was enough pull left to suck the crossover in up to the cover reference point.
 
One other thing that helped me. keep the core braid in neat condition. Tape the end when you extract it. Make sure the cover goes into it neatly with the braids matched up so it's nice and smooth.
I put a few stitches in the crossover to keep it locked and tightened a little bit.

I use a four foot bar as a lever to pull the last little bit in.
 
maarten, STEP AWAY FROM THE DOUBLE BLOCKS!!!

Seriously, with most ropes, if you have to resort to super high mechanical advantage (as describing here) you're going about it the wrong way. John's right that things change when you step up to large diameter, but you should be able to splice any arborist rope up to about 1" in diameter completely by hand.

Once you got the crossover done, do as Blinky described and give it a few stitches to compact it a bit and hold it together for these next few steps.

Now start running the splice home. Keep tension on the eye while running it home. You'll see the core strands tighten down, making it easier for them to fit in the tight hole.

As soon as it gets difficult, stop. Start flexing the rope where it is the stiffest. It will be difficult to bend at first, but then get easier after a few seconds of bending. You are literally pulling up slack from further down the rope and incorporating it into the splice.

Now run a little more home, then flex/massage more...etc.

love
nick
 
when that final bury gets really hard... i get out one of those souvenir baseball bats that are only a foot long and beat it against the ground. it loosens the fibers and relieves stress...
 
Regarding the "massaging" to bury splices.

The more you massage the weaker the splice will become. Samson tested a bunch of my splices and my weakest ones were the splices I spent the most time working. Not to say weaker in the sense of don't use or massage. More for an overall understanding of whate you may or may not be doing to the rope.
 
All above minimum standard. But there was a spread of about 3-400lbs (can't find the data sheet)and after discussing with a friend who submitted at the same time we concluded that those we spent the most time massaging were weaker. Some of the stands (stable braid) were slightly discoloured at the neck of the splice from the massaging.....an indicator of excessive massaging.
 
Kevin;

When you say 'massage' are you saying you beat the splice with a mallet or something similar?

Or did you simply massage it by hand, bending, bending, bending, pull, bending bending, bending, pull......?

And how did you finish the ones that were not massaged to the same extent? More brute force?
 
Hey Mahk, missed you last week.

No mechanical advantage used. Just a dowel through the eye for hand pulling/jerking with body weight only. Bending, bending and more bending.
 
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