Jamie

i use a coathanger i bent over. i'll add a picture, it has a loop on the end for pullling on or attaching a crab to a decent anchor point and massaging the splice, i.e pull the splice over the tapered tail not the tail through the splice.

until you get the hang of it try adding an extra few inches to teh end of the taper, with this extra you can further reduce EACH strand by about half to allow it to slide through the rope easily. you don't always have to do this. XTC etc splices easier as arbormaster has a few chunky plastic yarns running through eash strand.

here is my wire fid