Dye arbor rope?

[hillbilly]

I thoght I would cut 20-30 feet of my New England Hi-Vee
and make it a lanyard.
However, as to not mix up the lines, I would like to
get the lanyard a different color.
Has anyone dyed their arbor ropes before ?
Does it affect strength of the rope ?
What dyeing chemical did you use to get it to stick to
the arbor rope ?

I emailed New England about this, but their
answer is a bit cryptical to me.

 

[Kneejerk Bombas]

I understand that it is the strength issue. Dies can degrade a rope over time. Even the rope friendly dies the manufacturer uses causes the strength to drop. If you have two identical ropes, the white one will be stronger than the colored one.
There are so many different dies, how can one recommend dieing a climbing rope? Perhaps with the right die it would not matter much, but why risk it?
When I buy climbing ropes I don't get the same color each time, that way I can tell them apart, and if I make a lanyard out of one of them, there's a good chance it won't match my climbing line.

 

[NickfromWI]

Why dye when you don't have to!

Here's a trick I've used twice, with success. Take the section of rope you want for your flip line (say 10 feet), and get a piece of colored thread (say, red) and stitch the thread back and forth for the entire length. It's important to have a small stitch length (so that there is only a small bit of colored rope showing) or else you have a good chance of having the stitching getting caught/snagged on things. Also, I can't see any way this would weaken the rope.

let me know what you think!

love
nick

and in case you're wondering, when you are looking down at 10 pieces of white rope, that red or orange or black strand JUMPS out at you. it's nice.

 

[Drummer]

ON ROPE (1996) on dyeing

Here's a quote from p. 29:

"Pure nylon is naturally white but has the ability to absorb color dyes. There are two basic ways to dye nylon. Solution dyeing is the adding of a color agent to the nylon resin which can result in a weaker finished product. Surface dyeing is the adding of color to the yarns after the nylon fibers have been formed. This does not weaken the yarns, but the color bond is not as good..."

HTH,
Roger

 

[TheTreeSpyder]

A while back Samson explained to me that natural nylon is white, and that the dye molecules take up space, whereby; a white rope of the smae size had more nylon molecules in it, thereby stronger!

Also, a Sherrill splicer told me that he thought that NE Safety Blue (white) was easier to eyesplice than NE Safety Blue HyVee because the strands where flatter. Brion Toss hails ribbonning strands for splicing ease, strenght and security. Strands laying/mating flatter against each other take up less space so are easier to work through, missape the line less in there passing-thereby stronger splicings, and have more surface grab/ friction area for more security.

There was a warning out a while back about marking splices in production with magic markers, the warning stated that even with the 'safe' markers, the formulae for the ink varied with the costs of the ink's individual ingredients! Whereby i beleive there were some noted strength failures specifiecally at those points! i would be a lil'wary with dyes in that light! Perhaps a short run of tape at center and end to individualize?

i beleive in quick bright line identification; i even keep each end of each line taped with diffrent colors! The tape is also long enough to earmark how much tail should be sticking out of the knot (4x diameter).

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

I been using a krutzklem for a marker not on rigging ropes lately. Tie a rigiign sling on so that itt can pass through and it also acts as a light stopper knot.