Live Purposefully; Dare Greatly; Land Gently
If you're going to do something wrong, go for it! - Beryl G.
"Never knock on Death's door - just ring the bell and run. He hates that!"
Just gotta say thanks to the folks here. I'm in 100 degree heat working the BSA Jamboree in VA. Didn't bring enough devices to hang crap from my clotheline. BUT, I do have roll of some thin poly type laid stuff like mason's line. Let's see here, how's that thing work? Tied it right the first time and Voila. Nacrabiners. Thanks. They don't constrict down like the braided rope variety but I don't need that kind of strenth anyway. Now I just need to find the hammock display so I can get me one of them too!!
wow, a blast from the past! Yep, the queen, she's a tough old bird, even with four holes drilled through her. This holds up fine.
I figure I'm relatively safe on this side of the pond, but you suppose there are some kind of laws on your side prohibiting defacement of currency or something
Grizz
(alias ProfessorHammock on youtube)
I rounded up all the used rope that we have around the place that was used for experimentation. Wanted to make some nacrabiners and the random lengths of old rope works great.
The rope is odd lengths so we now have a load of nacrabiners of varying lengths and made from various ropes: 1.75 mm Lash-It, 2 mm Dynaglide, 3 mm Lash-It and 3 mm AS-78.
Most of the rope scraps had Sharpie markings in red and/or black so they look scroungy, but that doesn't affect their functionality as nacrabiners in any way.
I made both the original spliced variety and the variety that uses the Solomon Bar (scarab) for the closure lock. We like both kinds in differing situations.
That gives us breaking strengths and weights of:
- 1.75 mm Lash-It
- 700 lbs
- less than 1 gram to slightly over 1 gram to about 1.5 grams
- 2 mm Dynaglide
- 1750 lbs for the 2 mm Dynaglide,
- approximately 1 gram and slightly over 1 gram
- 3 mm Lash-It
- 2200 lbs
- slightly under 4 grams to about 4.5 grams
- 3 mm AS-78
- 5075 lbs
- ranging from approximately 5 to about 6 grams
In all cases, the scarab variety nacrabiners were at the heavy end of the weight ranges.
I didn't list finished lengths, since there aren't any 2 that are the same length. Some are just barely long enough to be usable. They vary in length from there to about 8" to 10" when opened.
I like the ability to match the weight and strength to what is needed. In a lot of situations the strength of the AS-78 is simply not needed and so we can use the very, very light 1.75 mm Lash-It, or if we want something a lot stronger and still exceedingly light, the Dynaglide nacrabiners. The Dynaglide nacrabiners are very hard to beat for strength and weight. I think any Dynaglide nacrabiner that was 2 grams would have to be more than 12" long when opened. In my experience, that is exceedingly long for a nacrabiner.
This is my foray into the Amsteel splicing. I used my own measurements due to I wanted it to be a bit longer than the ones I was seeing on the web, so it's not perfect, but I feel it's a good first try. I'm going to try and hang from it tonight as a test, and to help lock the knot...though I may also lock the tails then lock the nut. We will see which makes the most sense as learn a bit more. Unfortunately, I cut off about 4" of each tail, which, IMHO is too much waste. I'm going to work out my measurements to give me just enough to tie the knot and leave a short tail. I'm hoping each one of these will hold up to 500lbs (arbitrary weight), and I'm working out a way to test it so.
The nacrabiner has proven to be one of the most useful splices that there is. It is has a permanent spot in my knot tying and splicing arsenal.
Terry
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