Splicing a recovery harness with a fid

[ghostfather]

Ran across this video using sailmakers needles (a fid) to splice a large tubular kevlar harness.
Here's he's making a Y-harness, without having to sew the splices. Fascinating !


Here's a link in the UK to buy a set of fid's, which are probably also available in the US.
https://oceanrope.com/shop/selma-splicing-fids/

 

[ghostfather]

I now understand that people refer to this technique as the "finger trap" method, and there are enough older posts here on the forum about how it's done. Nothing new under the sun.
I thought of maybe trying this, but running the splices under the sewing machine with kevlar thread for a more permanenet splice. Sort of negates the advantage of being able to undo the splice, though I'm not sure how often that would be needed.

 

[Nytrunner]

That's a great video walkthrough Ghost, thanks for sharing!

 

[Bowman]

Ran across this video using sailmakers needles (a fid) to splice a large tubular kevlar harness.
Here's he's making a Y-harness, without having to sew the splices. Fascinating !


Here's a link in the UK to buy a set of fid's, which are probably also available in the US.
https://oceanrope.com/shop/selma-splicing-fids/

That set of splicing tools is available through marine suppliers. And as a bonus you get to pay Marine prices for them. I have that same set branded by "Samson" here in the US.
We used to repair and rebuild water-ski tow ropes that way. But the FID we used then was a plastic tube with a closed end, much cheaper.
For larger line you can achieve the same effect using a tight wrap of electrical tape. Just leave enough length to get the tape back off through the side.