Soft Shackles

[tolachi]

I'm also interested in this and was hoping to find a little more discussion of the soft shackles topic on spartalk.

I've made a few of these and have used the button knot doubled for the knob. It looks great and I have a lot of confidence that it will never work out. However, it is a PITA to tie and really slows down production. I am curious about the diamond knot. Does anybody else have any feedback on how appropriate it would be? Seems much easier to tie.

For the loop I have been using a sliding eyesplice and locking it with a brummel just before I tie the knob. This helps me keep the lengths of either side of the loop the right length. My thought is the eye of the loop should just not close around the neck of the shackle, thus ensuring that both strands are carrying load.

Does anyone know what kind of breaking strength you get from a soft shackle? It seems that there is theoretically the potential to have 2x the breaking strength of the line. With 1/8" sk78 that comes to 5600 lbs, which seems ridiculous.

Any thoughts appreciated.