Double-ended shrouds with Dux?

[Bott]

Hello all again,

am going to be re-rigging the shrouds of my gaff cutter with Dux (9mm) and am currently thinking of how I want to terminate the shrouds at the hounds. Through some brainstorming I came to a possible, elegant solution with corollaries in traditional gaffer standing rigging: using a single piece of wire for a pair of shrouds creating a soft eye in the center with a well done wire seizing (as described at the end of page 39 in Hand Reef and Steer).

My shrouds are going to be shackled to a tang at the hounds, but I was wondering if I would be a workable solution to have a single piece of line for both shrouds on one side, bend round a thimble at the center and seized at the thimbles throat... or possibly eye spliced at the center with both legs free at the end to create the two shrouds?

I have a feeling that dyenx dux may just be just too slippery to make this arrangement work, but the elegance and simplicity of it seems so great that I couldn't help but explore the idea.

Thanks,
Eric

ps- Brion, it was very excellent to chat and train with you at the AikiWeb Seminar, thanks for the kind company.

[Brian Duff]

what size boat?

[Bott]

Sorry 'bout that...

32' on deck, ~20,000 lbs, setting about 800 sq ft of working sail. Two shrouds per side, running backs, standing forestay and a running jibstay.

Edit: and she's got a strong 'gass hull with large sawn douglas fir deckbeams. I am not overly worried about pushing the rig hard unlike some older classic cutters.

[Brian Duff]

i'd make them each seperate independent shrouds.

is it a deck stepped rig?

[Bott]

keel stepped. there is about 20" of swift in the ~35' after shrouds... most all of the aft-staying for the mast is in the running back and peak halyard.

[Brion Toss]

Hi Eric,
Shroud pairs are indeed an elegant way of handling lowers, but they are trustworthy only if they can pass a worst-case-scenario test: the seizing must hold even if one of the legs is broken or loosened, so that all of the load comes on the seizing. And it will do so only if the seizing is made exquisitely correctly, and doing that is even harder than splicing correctly. So unless you work up that skill, I'm with Brian in recommending separate lowers. And on separate tangs.
With Dynex it turns out that it is not even possible to seize, no matter how exquisitely; we recently destruction-tested several samples, and the stuff just crawls through the seizing, at very low loads. We were able to use a multiple Brummel successfully, but at least as tested we were only in the 60-65% strength range. Therefore when we rig a Ranger 33 in the near future we will up the size of the lowers to compensate, and you could do the same.
So, a shroud pair in wire, if you contribute the skill. Otherwise splice and install a second tang. Or a Brummel in Dynex, and thus a shroud pair there.
In gasshu,
Brion Toss