Bloody Marlow D2 splice

[RoyB]

I'm at wits end trying to put an eye splice in some 8 mm (about 5/16") marlow D2. I've been able to splice everything else I've tried so far but this stuff defies me.

It's an absolute pain extracting the core through the ever so tight cover - and the cover doesn't seem to be able to stretch enough to accept the spliced core no matter what I do. I've tried all the various tricks from Brion / Margie's book to no avail.

Does anyone have any experience with this stuff and hopefully a hint or two?

It's urethane / UV coated spectra core inside a very dense tight cover.

I need to get these splices made in the next day or two in preparation for THE race of the year.

They're for asymmetric spinnaker sheets. If all else fails I'll strip some cover and put a brummel in the stripped core but the foredeck crew would prefer a splice with cover on as they stuggle to grip fully stripped sheets when dropping the sail.

HELP!!!!!

[Brion Toss]

Happy Sixth Day of Solstice,
Marlow rope, in my experience, tends to be absurdly difficult to splice, with no corresponding advantage. I have not handled the D2 yet, but from the description it sounds like it's meant for extremes (coated core for working well in clutches, heavy racing hype text), thus the tightness of the cover.
Let's start with getting the core out. Try bunching the cover by pulling the core from the end. Hold the bunch, and hammer on the hoped-for exit point with a wooden or plastic mallet. Now bend the exit point, flex the rope sharply, take a deep breath, and start nudging the cover yarns, starting, of course, an inch or so away from the exit point, and working inwards.
Next, the splice. If I were me, and there were a race tomorrow, I would definitely Brummel and bury, then run the cover as far home as possible. Until you can figure out where to exit the core and have this come out even, just exit at the regular place and very carefully keep cutting away at the cover end until you can milk all the slack out. Does that make sense? You should be able to get the cover to swallow at least some of the buried core tail. Get as much buried as you can, then whip the end of the cover down to the core.
Alternatively, you could strip the cover a ways back, then bury a foot of it into the core, ahead of the core splice tail, but this might, as you indicate, not be appreciated by the deck crew.
Fair leads,
Brion Toss

[RoyB]

Thanks Brion - I'll try all of that after the race series ends :-)

I wound up just burying the cover , leaving a few feet of bare core, in which I made a bruied brummel. For our application this may be nearly optimum as it results in lighter sheet ends on the big asymmetric kite.

I'll watch the bare end for wear and chafe.

You have no idea how happy I was to find out that you agree the Marlow is hard to splice. I was starting to doubt my new found skills (that I mostly gained by reading your and Margie's Book 5 about splicing). It is without a doubt the best and clearest splicing manual I've seen and I've seen plenty.

One other thing I've noticed about the Marlow is that they seem to have used some sort of very light adhesive or something to make the cover stay put on the core. The side effect of this is that the line is unusably stiff. I think I'm going to need to run the core up over most of the length of the line and then "rebalance it" to break this apparent adhesive and allow the sheet to flex properly and not jam in the turning blocks.

[NickfromWI]

I've never heard of a rope being given an adhesive coating on the inside, so I had to go check it out. Sure enough, straight from marlow's website: "The inner core is coated with polyurethane to improve adhesion between core and cover giving outstanding performance in clutches and jammers and improving abrasion resistance when uncovered."

Crazy. Makes sense, but still crazy! I'm sure that makes the splicing process a breeze I've heard of lubricating the fibers, or coating for uv protection...but adhesion? Sorta goes against what I thought gives best strength...but for this application, it makes sense...

or is this why marlow is being bought out by another company?

Let us know how it goes!

love
nick

[glynn]

I had just plucked up the courage to ask a question , when the first item on the forum almost answered it for me.
I am trying to splice 14mm braid on braid with my new wand, book and novice enthusiasm.My first three attempts look awful, with the cover not swallowing all the core and threads snagged everywhere.Is this more of a problem with Marlow rope , or do I just need lots of practice.
My real question was what to do with the eye. For handybillies, running backstays, etc should they be left soft or should I try and insert a stainless eye into the mess?
Glynn

[NickfromWI]

Practice will fix the problems you're describing. Be gentle the wand, get to know how it feels when it's sliding inside the rope and you'll soon be able to identify when it's snagged on something.

love
nick

[RoyB]

Originally Posted by NickfromWI

I've never heard of a rope being given an adhesive coating on the inside, so I had to go check it out. Sure enough, straight from marlow's website: "The inner core is coated with polyurethane to improve adhesion between core and cover giving outstanding performance in clutches and jammers and improving abrasion resistance when uncovered."

Nick - I've spliced other products that have urethane coated cores - Samson and others make them as well. They are used for stripped halyards and spinnaker sheets among other things.

I think the problem with D2 is that the urethane coating is quite heavy and the cover is woven very tight.

This combination hits hard when extracting the core and also when running the cover home as it increased the adhesion of cover to core

[NickfromWI]

I've spliced LOTS of ropes that have coated cores, but never something that had a coating that is INTENDED to make it sticky.

I'd love to try to splice it. I'm sure it would be fun....once.

love
nick