Wednesday, September 07, 2016
Knot of the Week Video: How to Short Splice a Natural Fiber Rope
ITS Tactical: On today’s Knot of the Week I’ll be delving more into splicing and go over the Short Splice. This is really nothing more than splicing two 3-strand natural fiber ropes together. If you were following along on our last video the the Eye Splice, this follows a very similar pattern.
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5 comments:
The title of this video tutorial caught my eye, I usually think of the word slicing as something to do with cells in a science lab.This short video was so interesting to me. I’m fascinated by knots and rope work, especially considering how many knots are useful in theatre. I know a good few of knots, but I’ve never come across the notion of splicing. Splicing makes a lot of sense if you want to make a rope stronger without having to buy a completely new piece of rope to meet new weight standards. I like the idea of splicing a twine with perhaps a metallic rope. This would, depending on how you spliced, strengthen the rope without causing the twine to snap immediately. Rope splicing is like a scientific experiment in combining two different kinds of rope. Overall, I enjoyed the video and will have to find a way to try this technique out myself sometime.
I find knots and rope fascinating. The short spice shown here is something that I haven’t done before. The video is pretty clear on how the splice is done, but I think that they could have done a better job on showing the path of the spliced ends – that is to say, making sure that the each twist of rope follows the correct path. I’m not sure how useful this is in theater, especially because the splice adds width to the rope and would most likely prevent it from going through sheave. This is a skill that one wouldn’t use that often, but when you need it would come in really handy. While this splice is interesting, I find it more interesting that the knot of the week on this website is this splice using natural fiber rope. It just seems like there’s something a little more practical or up to date than a natural fiber splice. Maybe that’s just because I hate natural rope.
Last year during my rigging class we learned something similar with the Flemish turn back eye. It followed the same idea where you untwist the rope and or cable and use the different tails to bind the two ends together. We learned that this is not the most efficient way because of the friction that is involved but depending on the job you are doing it might be the only solution. I think this video does a very nice jobs of explain the proper method of doing this task and also makes it very clear to the viewer what is happening with what part of the rope by using visual aids. I would have been interested in hearing a bit more about the ultimate breaking strength of this method but I wouldn’t be surprised if it could achieve close to 50%. Obviously there are some concerns that present themselves in this method but overall it seems to be pretty straightforward. Next time I have a rigging call I will be sure to bring up this weeks knot video into the discussion.
I liked this article because i think this is a useful technique that i will be able to archive for future use. splicing is often necessary in day to day work in the theater, (or at least it has been for me) and i think having this will be convenient in the coming years. it would have been nice to hear a little more about this type of splice because there are always multiple ways to splice a rope, but it can be hard to know which one to use. even so, the video was able to convey the action of splicing the rope well, and i can pretty assuredly say that i could copy this same splice if need be. I have in the past done a lot of rigging, and i found this video interesting and fun i think splicing in general is fun, and i hope to have fun with this splice specifically.
Splicing rope is a skill that I wished more people today had, while it seems that a fair amount of people in the theater industry know a fair amount of know it seems that splicing has gone to the wayside. This video is pretty well done in showing how to do the short splice, however while I like his usage of electric tape in the instructions and teaching of a splice, however he made a statement that he would do that with all splices he does and would just cut the Electric tape off. this make me cringe a little because first electric tape by its nature is relatively slippery and would end up weakening your splice. As for his comments about just cutting it off, if you do your splice right the majority of that electric tape is still going to be un exposed. This is not to say that I don't use electric tape when tying my spices but that instead of wrapping the entire strand I would just do the tip of each strand, it also help to wrap your terminated ends with electric tape as it helps the splice stay cleaner and less frayed.While I have used short splices in the past, recently I find that a eye splice tends to be more useful spice to know.
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