Loop spliced into 3-strand - strength

[Sticky Fingers]

I thought that...

"Loop" = long open loop, no liner
"Eye" = tight wrap around a plastic or steel thimble...?

"Dogged" new one on me I'll have a look at that

 

[Homer Simpson's Lovechild]

I thought that...

"Loop" = long open loop, no liner
"Eye" = tight wrap around a plastic or steel thimble...?

Well,,,,, actually, there's no "string" or "Loops" in the rope locker at all - sorry !
When you tie a bowline or make an eye splice you form an "Eye" it can be "soft" or "hard" ( if its got a thimble)
Then we've got "Bights" which are often also ( wrongly) called "Loops" by "Shoresiders"
Then again - who really cares ? ��

 

[Sticky Fingers]

Well, I do, I like to get it right. Soft eye or hard eye. Learn something new every day

 

[Amulet]

I don't know about everyone else. To be easy to handle I have reasonably thick mooring ropes. If I look at the breaking strain you could probably pick the boat up using them. If I was putting enough strain on them to snap them even reduced to 50% (?) strength with a bowline I'd be in pretty serious trouble anyway. I think it might pull a cleat off the boat first. A cack-handed splice can fail - I've seen it happen. I have had a mooring warp fail, but through chafe not strain.

 

[Sticky Fingers]

Yes, the non-pro splice quality worried me a bit but I think I'm OK with what I did.

 

[snooks]

This depends on the rope.
A higher modulus rope will lose more strength due to a knot, as the most highly loaded strands do not stretch enough to share the load with the other strands.
A bowline in dyneema can be quite weak in terms of the rope's BS, but mostly dyneema is used for low stretch rather than high BS anyway.
A bowline in nylon might retain a very high % of the breaking load.

In the forthcoming November issue of YM you can find out how much different knots can reduce the breaking strain of different ropes.

10mm polyester 3-braid with a breaking strain of 2,600 kg can be stronger than a 10mm Dyneema cored line with a breaking strain of 5,300kg depending on the knot tied in it :0)