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

When splicing the most important things to find out are:

*the construction:- what kind of braid / plait, is the core, does the core and the sheath share the load

*the materials used:- polyester and nylon are spliced differently to kevlar, duyneema vectran etc

Yales XTC is a class one 16strand (arb line, but end use doesn't matter to a rope or a splice) so both the New England (hi vee) or Samsons (arbormaster) directions are A-OK to use. i couldn't find Yales but the differences in measurements is tiny. here are New Englands hi vee directionsand directions for samsons arbormaster

When trying to redesign splices you'll also need to think about how you are going to use the splice any problems with particular techniques. how the rope is made and using its construction you can make no end of tools. for example the core in XTC, Arbormaster, HI vee is there only to keep the rope round, all the strength is in the sheath (hence there is no core in the eye).

hope that helps some.

Jamie

what did you get? i like to poke around yacht chandlers looking for stuff, my local one has a bin of short lengths of rope at cheap prices which is great to practice on.

i spliced up the armor prus with a standard doublebraid splice. i'm not happy with it like that in the slightest. unfortunatly steve could only spare a short length. i think i may have to try and blag some more off of Tony at donaghys.

for eye to eye cords, remember as the splice is buried the cord will shorten as it has to stretch round the increased quantity of rope. i keep meaning to measure the slack taken up and note down the difference. also see the note from samson i posted in your thread. being teh geek that i am i've printed off all samsons, yales, new englands directions. I find samson the best ones to follow, yale measure out the taper slightly differently on Dbraids.

on 10mm cord i've found the taper is just the right length to mark out where to tie my blakes. it seems to be the perfect length on a butterfly.

i think you may have to ask me specifics as i'll just rabbit on in a random fashion otherwise.

Jamie