Termination Knots

[NickfromWI]

I terminate my rope with a sewn eye termination, consisting of a steel rope thimble, sewn eye termination (like the petzl lanyards) covered with a siezing whipping, (both the sewn and siezing whipping are 100lb test polyester sailcord), and finally everything is covered with 2mm thick industrial shrinktrubing to protect the cord form abrasion.

sewn eye and siezings are considered by many to be stronger than a splice....100% of the rope strength is maintained , right thru the bend in the eye, to the end of the rope.

Had a bunch of these tested at on a pull test machine. the sewn eye temrination was on arborplex. broke at 6900lbs, and NOT at the sewn part but at the rope above the sewn eye.

good enough for me, simle and quick to do, and looks neat and tidy. Bombproof too.

I've seen the pictures of his work, and it's nicely done. I'm looking forward to the new batch of pics.

It's worth mentioning that there currently are no manufacturers that endorse hand-sewn terminations. ANSI does not yet have a rule on it, either. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be done...it just means it hasn't been considered yet.

What happens if you nick the whipping twine with the ol' handsaw?

Bring us more pics!

love
nick

 

[046]

Nick, you have an unfair advantage to most of us that don't splice regularly. splices when done properly are very strong. problem is most of us don't know who doing the splice.

as you pointed out, there's no way to inspect a splice. it would be interesting to see strength loss of triple fisherman VS a splice. I'm thinking it would be real close.

a knot that I tied and inspected to be correct. hands down, without question is trustworthy enough to trust my life to. could not say the same for a splice.

An eye splice in a climbing line won't cinch, but if done properly, it won't slide around the biner, either. I use a tiny eye on mine, and it does NOT slip around the carabiner.

As far as inspectability, you just have to inspect that that haven't cut any fibers of the rope near the splice. You can't "back up" a splice. You don't HAVE to back it up. If done properly, you don't even have to think about the splice.

For me, the front of my harness is some high-value real estate. There always isn't room for everything. This is not the place to be cluttering up with bulky knots and backup knots.

No not can come close in strength retention to a splice.

I'm on the other end of the spectrum....I only use knots when I don't have spliced pieces available.

love
nick

 

[SRT-Tech]

pic from the FIRST batch of sewn eye terminations:

(NOTE: first batch did;nt have steel thimbles or 2 layers of 2mm thick shrink tubing over them)

the rope is 1/2" arborplex (not splicable, hence the sewn eye)

what you see here is the OUTER siezing that COVERS the inner siezing, which in turn covers the sewn portion. Thread is 100lb test polyester sail thread, all wraps were done with 80lbs of pull on each wrap. The cord itself was tested on its own and it broke at 130lbs average (straight pull on bollards).

please note these are my REC climbing lines and not my work lines.

 

[moray]

gorgeous!

Very slick, SRT. I bet even without the sewing, the seizing alone would give a splice of nearly full strength. Make it a few inches longer, sans sewing, and I would be amazed if it didn't reach full strength.

The standard splice (on rope where it can be used) does have one advantage: it is fairly flexible. This is nice if you need the spliced end to wrap around a limb and clip to itself, as in SRT (not you, the technique!).

Any chance you could do a break test on a splice with whipping only?

 

[Kneejerk Bombas]

Cut that tail at an angle and whip all the way over it, so you have a nice taper.

 

[Kneejerk Bombas]

Sewn eye splices are more and more common.
I tore into an old sewn eye splice done by Petzl, and it was a major task just to cut it apart with a knife.

 

[knudeNoggin]

Nick, against concerns about accidental cutting of (part of) the seizing
(seizing, here, folks--not whipping), the seizing could be done
in three parts, each independent of the others; or it could be done in the
form of French Whipping--a sequence of Half-hitches (with perhaps the
occasional Constrictor (or Strangle) knot put in as a surer *rip-stop*.
And recall that over this seizing (which is over the sewing) comes the
double plastic guard.

Given the strength of that seizing cord (100+ #) and, what, over 50 wraps,
that's some 10_000# of binding in place!

To those who somehow doubt the splice on account of some inability to
inspect it, I wonder what it is you'd like to see that you think might
occur inside the cover? If the concern is simply that the bury might be
coming out, some stitching should provide all the assurance one needs:
if the stitching's in place & unbroken, then there has been no movement
of the bury for worry.

(-;

 

[046]

good point about stitching combined with splices.

there's been documented cases of commercial splices coming apart. so the real issue was the splice done properly to begin with. since there's no way to inspect....

To those who somehow doubt the splice on account of some inability to
inspect it, I wonder what it is you'd like to see that you think might
occur inside the cover? If the concern is simply that the bury might be
coming out, some stitching should provide all the assurance one needs:
if the stitching's in place & unbroken, then there has been no movement
of the bury for worry.

(-;

 

[SRT-Tech]

version 2 pics:

 

[moray]

Looks good but you will not find me hanging on it.

For the person who suggested that just the whipping would probably hold.............oh boy!..........Imagine hanging 60ft. in the air looking at a splice that was ony whipped.

Thats me. Yesterday I was hanging 60 feet in the air looking at a splice that wasn't even whipped--it was merely buried.

Experience shows that such a splice will hold, but it doesn't even begin to work until the rope is under tension, thereby causing the outer rope to squeeze the buried part. It is nothing but the friction of these two chunks of rope squeezing against each other that keeps one from slipping past the other. It's not at all self-evident that this should work, and it's not an idea I would ever have come up with on my own.

With the whipping, on the other hand, the two chunks of rope are already tightly bound together before any tension is applied. There is a whole lot of friction uniformly applied over as great a distance as you choose to whip. The only question is how much distance is enough for a given type and tension of whipping twine.

The Achilles heel of the whipping, assuming it is made from one continuous piece of twine, is that a single cut to the twine will destroy the whole thing. By using several pieces of twine, and/or by shrink-wrapping the finished splice, this weakness could be overcome.

A termination knot also works because of friction. Only some parts of the knot supply any friction at all, and they do so in a highly non-uniform manner. Imagine hanging 60ft. in the air looking at a nothing but a knot!!!

 

[Kneejerk Bombas]

I still think you need some taper on the stubby end. Even running the shrink wrap over the end would give you some. You could put a wedge of something and shrink wrap up an inch or two past the end, it will snag less and last longer.

 

[moray]

Given the strength of that seizing cord (100+ #) and, what, over 50 wraps,
that's some 10_000# of binding in place!

(-;

This is very interesting, KN. Might be closer to 8000# holding the splice together if he did his wraps at 80# tension. Either way, it seems like tremendous overkill. But your comment suggests an interesting experiment, based on the notion from physics that friction between two surfaces is proportional to the normal force between the surfaces. We just squeeze two pieces of rope together with a known weight, using some suitable fixture to hold the ropes while allowing them to slide. Then we measure the force needed to make them slide.

We could test this using a series of weights to see if the principle of proportionality holds. From the data, you could calculate some reasonable numbers for a seizing to hold a splice together.

I suspect that the seizing is actually a lot more efficient at producing a splice than the mere pressure of the wraps would indicate. The seizing twine bites into the surface of the rope like skidder chains bite into the ground...

Hmm... I think this experiment would actually be easier to do with seizing twine. With a pulley and a dumbbell one could produce a few wraps of seizing with uniform tension. Then you could use a spring scale to measure the force needed to make the ropes slide apart. If my garage ever warms up, I may give this a go...

 

[SRT-Tech]

Mike Mass, wait for the next one i sew/sieze/whip/cover with shrinktubing!!! i'll cut the rope end with the hotknife, at a sharp taper.

i normally have that side of the termination facing me when i climb, it has never snagged on anyhting yet (i tend to be a surgically precise climber)

i may be getting a used industrial lockstitch machine in the future, big ol beast , all cast iron.

 

[Kneejerk Bombas]

Cool.
Petzl has a performed, transparent cover with a taper built in. It really helps when you pull the rope back through crotches.
My name is Maas, by the way, not Mass.

 

[SRT-Tech]

^ oops, my apologies!

i'm getting a can of the urethane dip that they use for the ends of some military ropes (F.R.I.E.S.)

the rope ends, once dipped , will look similar to this:

< this is NOT my rope, it is what my rope WILL look like when dipped.

 

[TheTreeSpyder]

Wow! Very nice SRT-Tech! My only reservations are the securing of direction of force flow on long axis of krab; so as to not sideload krab per Not cinching up on krab warnings. i think in the arena of personal support/ live moving cargo suspended for lengths of time this is more critical than single use set, then immediately lowered; loading operations in this reguard.

046-The animations are done in Macromedia/now Adobe Flash; a right click will show the familiar menu. i've re-disorganized so many drawings and animations that i've lost some over time it seems. So; i've been trying to gather the Flash-Rope/Knot ones onto a page of it's own:

Some knot and rope force Flash animations; which are a far cry from the humble beginnings of 1st Rope Archive of Drawings or the Infamous Maaslovian Warning. The Flash vehicle offers vector drawings strategy, which lose no definition on enlargemeant(can make full page size, and then right click and zoom in about 10x and still have same quality), no larger file size for this enlargemeant and smaller files to begin with. The regular drawings archive and the animated .gif/Warning are usually much bigger file size, smaller pictures of less quality and way less information.

Minor Draw Backs: Flash does need a plugin, and is more processor intensive; but these are minor drawbacks, and mostly mute at today's level of electronics and web browsers. The 1st 6 or so knot animations are from the newer Flash8; so non-mainstream browsers; or those without newest plugin may have some trouble seeing them.

 

[SRT-Tech]

not sure what you mean? the carabiner is loaded properly , the thimble rests along the spine, there is no side loading....its no diffe3re3nt a spliced rope end that we all use...and besides, the minimum breaking strength of the steel OSHA/ANSI biner i'm using is well over 11 250 lbs.

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