Loop spliced into 3-strand - strength

The OP was enquiring about the strength of an eye splice. I'm not sure of the relevance of all the talk about long splices, which are surely for joining two ends, and made long and thin so that they can pass through a block.
 
lpdsn said:
I've only ever had one mooring line snap. I'd spliced the loop in myself. The loop itself snapped about half way round where it was looped around the cleat. Neither the splice nor the standing part it was spliced into were affected.

It was only a 10mm line I used as a shock-absorber in addition to the doubled up mooring lines. The GFS was forecasting 66 Kts at the marina and it probably was topping that went it went, so all in all I was happy with the performance of the splice.
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One possible explanation is that the diameter of the bar of the cleat was not large enough to help the rope turn without compressing it in a small area.

If thsi compression is repeated (as in as surge on a pontoon) then heat can build up and the fibres change from filamentous to solid nylon or polyprop. This fractures and therope breaks at relatively low tension.
 
lpdsn said:
I've only ever had one mooring line snap. I'd spliced the loop in myself. The loop itself snapped about half way round where it was looped around the cleat. Neither the splice nor the standing part it was spliced into were affected.

It was only a 10mm line I used as a shock-absorber in addition to the doubled up mooring lines. The GFS was forecasting 66 Kts at the marina and it probably was topping that went it went, so all in all I was happy with the performance of the splice.
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penberth3 said:
Sounds good to me. If you cover it you can't inspect it, but tightly served it's less likely to loosen. I'd leave it.
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Yes. I'm pretty much agnostic about serving splices, and tend not to do it full length when I do it. It has two functions: 1) to protect the splice from chafing and 2) to compress the fibres, increasing the friction holding the splice together. However, I've never seen a splice fail by strands slipping out, and heat sealing the cut ends tends to preven them from slipping anyway. There is another treatment that you can do, which is to divide each strand and seize each half to the adjacent half - it looks good in theory, but I've never done it.
 
AntarcticPilot said:
However, long splices are rarely appropriate these days; we rarely need to have splices passing through blocks, which is the whole point of the long splice ...
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I have a Sailspar continuous line furling system which requires an end-to-end splice in the 8mm braid-on-braid furling line. It came with the boat and I confess I have no idea now the splice is done.
 
JumbleDuck said:
I have a Sailspar continuous line furling system which requires an end-to-end splice in the 8mm braid-on-braid furling line. It came with the boat and I confess I have no idea now the splice is done.
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It's quite easy on certain sorts of rope, such as Marlow Excel Racing dyneema.
Some other braid-on-braid it just won't work.
Google 'continuous control line splice'

Used a lot on dinghies for controls with cleats either side.
 
sarabande said:
One possible explanation is that the diameter of the bar of the cleat was not large enough to help the rope turn without compressing it in a small area.

If thsi compression is repeated (as in as surge on a pontoon) then heat can build up and the fibres change from filamentous to solid nylon or polyprop. This fractures and therope breaks at relatively low tension.
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Possibly. I doubt it was at low tension though. Even the GFS said 66 Kts and the boat was in a marina where the wind funnelled in from the west. I had everything doubled or tripled up with the extra under-sized 10mm lines the tightest as they were the stretchiest so acted best as shock absorbers to protect the cleats.

It was a case of if the boat was going the pontoon was going with it.
 
AntarcticPilot said:
...There is another treatment that you can do, which is to divide each strand and seize each half to the adjacent half - it looks good in theory, but I've never done it.
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I once did that on a horse's leading rope - only reason being I had the time and thought it would be good to practice a bit of ropework!
 
JumbleDuck said:
I have a Sailspar continuous line furling system which requires an end-to-end splice in the 8mm braid-on-braid furling line. It came with the boat and I confess I have no idea now the splice is done.
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If you decide to replace, it's not too difficult, and you need to practice... HOWEVER... do NOT practice with used line, it's almost impossible to braid on braid splice compared with brand new...
 
Gladys said:
If you decide to replace, it's not too difficult, and you need to practice... HOWEVER... do NOT practice with used line, it's almost impossible to braid on braid splice compared with brand new...
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Absolutely!

When practising, the most useful thing is to 'calibrate' how much shorter the core gets when either the sheath or another bit of core is stuffed up the middle.
 
JumbleDuck said:
I have a Sailspar continuous line furling system which requires an end-to-end splice in the 8mm braid-on-braid furling line. It came with the boat and I confess I have no idea now the splice is done.
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It's not difficult to do. Have a look on YouTube. Look at a few as there are slight variations in the technique. I bought my splicing needles from Rooster Sailing but should be a fair few other sources.

Tips I found. Use a marker pen to mark the inner braid when it just starts to come out. Start the splice of the inner braid into inner braid just upstream of that. Helps get the splice back in when milking the braid.

The most difficult part is milking the braid back over. Hard as one person to keep the tension on and do the milking. Obviously they can do it in the videos but they've been practising for years, but easier if you have a helper there. If that goes wrong you end up with a tuft of the inner braid showing.

And as said above, old braid is no use for practising.
 
lpdsn said:
It's not difficult to do. Have a look on YouTube. Look at a few as there are slight variations in the technique. I bought my splicing needles from Rooster Sailing but should be a fair few other sources.

Tips I found. Use a marker pen to mark the inner braid when it just starts to come out. Start the splice of the inner braid into inner braid just upstream of that. Helps get the splice back in when milking the braid.

The most difficult part is milking the braid back over. Hard as one person to keep the tension on and do the milking. Obviously they can do it in the videos but they've been practising for years, but easier if you have a helper there. If that goes wrong you end up with a tuft of the inner braid showing.

And as said above, old braid is no use for practising.
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Something that helps with "milking" larger lines is to fasten the rope securely to a strong point (last time I used the arm of our sofa bed!), allowing 1-2 metres between the fixing point and the splice. This means you can use both hands and your body weight to get the outer sheath over the lumps and bumps of the inner sheath. I succeeded in doing an eye-splice in an old rope this way - I had despaired of getting it to work up to trying that!
 
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It's been a bit thread-drift, but thanks for your advice, everyone. The splice I have isn't great - it's stiff and therefore hard to pull through the furler, so I have to set it up to avoid that. Making a new line will be an interesting winter project.
 
Can I be the first pedant please ?
It's not a "Loop" - it's an "Eye" - hence "Eye Splice"
Anyway , when I used to work on ships and tugs where the rigging could kill you when it failed, serving on a rope splice was one of my pet hates . Wire splices could be served at the finish or taper but I was always suspicious if the serving covered the body of the splice. It invariably covered up all manner of horrors below.
"Yankee Serving"- aka electrical tape - would almost always be a cover up job for a bodged splice and be usually be chopped out by me when I was Bosun.
Tapering looks nice but for real security the tails should be "Dogged" - split and seized or melted to its neighbour's half.
 
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