how do you keep the working ends attached?

I used to have the same problem until I learned of the amazingness of a wire fit. My advice, ditch the hollow fids, make yourself a wire fid and save yourself some headaches.
 
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having an issue with keeping the ends attached to the fid when running it thru. Anyone have a trick??

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Once you go wire fid, you'll never go back to tube fids. Let me know if you want me to send you some piano wire.
Piano wire changes splicing, period....
 
I made my own tube fids, and I'm glad I did. Otherwise it would have been a huge waste of money. I have yet to try piano wire, but I use a coat hanger. It works great! one tip though is that after you get the rope through the hole tape the two wires together then tape over the rope. This reduces the chances of loosing the end in the rope.
 
I haven't been able to find piano wire around here, so I just use a coat hanger. It's worked great so far... well until I was splicing some 16-strand yesterday and on my final bury the fid snapped in half. Anyway, I just bent a new one and went back to it after some fighting to get the cover back out.
 
Flash, how the heck did you break coat hanger wire in half while pulling on it lengthwise? You must've been cranking down pretty hard on it!

I agree with everyone here. Go to a wire pull fid. If you MUST stick with the push fid, you'll have better luck stepping down to the smallest size fid that will accomodate the tail you're working with. Taper the last 4" of the tail so that it will fit into the smaller fids. Tightly tape the end of the tail to form a bullet and insert that into the end of the fid, then push the fid down the rope by pushing the end of the pusher INTO the bullet you've made.

What kind of rope are you splicing?

For the record, I think that when properly used, push fids ARE faster than wire fids, but that they also take practice and don't work well for 16 strand rope, Blaze, Velocity, and Tachyon... which makes most tree guys say "stay away from push fids!"

So, yeah, Fairfield- get yourself some wire!

love
nick
 
I think it was because when I originally bent it I must have crimped it with my pliers and made a bur. So I broke out the old flat file and filed the bur off. It was a really thin hanger that just had a thick coat of paint on it and I think the filing just weakend it enough to make it easy to break.
 
Ive never used a wire fid before but I've had no problems using push fids. Just the splciing kit from Samson. I've spliced Blaze, Tachyon, Tenex, HRC and Bee Line all with push fids and havent had any problems. A buddy of mine swears by the splicing wand but I dont like it :) Just my two cents!
 
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