Thread: too much bury ?
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Old 01-20-2008, 12:37 PM
Brion Toss Brion Toss is offline
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Hi,
Tests we've done confirm that there can be too much of a good thing. I used to bury an excess of tail, thinking to make the splice more bulletproof, but the rope was significantly weakened. Introducing the end into the standing part deforms the latter, in any splice. This is offset by a gain in mass, which is why good splices still test at or near 100% efficiency, but this only goes so far; bury too much and you weaken the rope more than the extra material can compensate for. There are ways around this, like weaving a longer helix angle in the area to be spliced, such that it becomes a not-too-tight angle post-splice, but we are talking extreme circumstances. For real-world use, once you get a reassuring redundancy of friction, there is no point in getting more. Especially if you thereby weaken things.
Fair leads,
Brion Toss
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