High-quality black-and-white photographs of large old machines and tools

[Ralphxyz]

Marv, how does one splice the ropes?

Ralph

[jimfols]

[QUOTE=mklotz;207864]If you want to see one (all right, a much smaller one) in action...

[/QUOT

Sure beats having to match the individual rope lengths.

[12bolts]

But, here's a 42' Industrial History: Big Machine Tools

Well that was quite a rabbit hole

[mklotz]

Marv, how does one splice the ropes?

Ralph

The "rope" is really a heavy, three strand string. There is only one join; the finished "belt" is a single loop. In order to get the loop size correct, it was formed with the rope in place on the model. In my younger days I built a lot of ship models so I was familiar with the splicing process but I expect one can find information on that on the web. Once spliced, the individual strands were reinforced with sewing thread because I didn't trust the cord's friction to handle the strain.

The whole process is a real exercise in frustration and fidgeting. I don't care to repeat it. Fortunately, if I did have to repeat it, I can now measure the existing one to get the loop size and not have to spice the new one on the model.

Animated knots has a whole section devoted to splices...

https://www.animatedknots.com/splicing-knots

This one...

https://www.animatedknots.com/short-splice-knot

shows an animation of splicing two pieces of three strand rope, much like what was done on my minature rope drive engine.

[IntheGroove]

Splicing-is fastening two Ends of a Rope together, with uncommon Slight-to execute which requires no ordinary Skill; as I can venture to say not one Seaman in twenty can perform it.

A Naval Repository, 1762

[marksbug]

my wife is a manager at west marine, they had one guy that mad appointments to teach or do it for people. sadley he has passed ,I dont think any of the other salors that wprk in any of the local stores can do it. this guy was awesome. but he was in the Caribbean sailing and stepped on something, sepsis then stepped in.gone in about a week. so sad.

[Rikk]

When I was a lad in my teens, 30+ years ago, I worked at an auto parts store. We sold a lot of parts to local farms and one of the things we would sell was 3" diameter rope (special order obviously) so they could use it to pull stuck equipment out during fall harvest season when it was muddy. We had an old retired Navy guy who would pick up the rope, we would toss it in his pickup for him and he would take it home to his shop and pull each end of the rope out of the truck and braid eyes in each end for clevises. He was probably 70-80 and could only handle so much of the rope, so we made sure he could easily get 8-10 feet of rope out of his truck and onto a workbench. He would bring it back in a couple of days and you couldn't even tell that it wasn't a "factory" end. Although I would bet they are done at the factory by hand as well, but they didn't offer it for these monster ropes. We would coil the rope onto a pallet, strap it down and deliver it to the farm.

He would come in when we were slow and teach us to tie knots. He would have to slow down so we could follow him and could tie most of them with his eyes closed. I still use a bowline all the time as it's the only one I can do quickly without having to look at my hands.

Edit: I just remembered him telling us that he could tie the knots with his eyes closed because he had to be able to do it in the dark or underwater with no visibility. He sure was a neat guy, very patient and had great stories.

[marksbug]

yup thats like my old friend.

[hemmjo]

If anyone is truly interested in learning to tie knots, the good kind that you can also untie when necessary, you need to practice. Find some rope and search for instructions. There are lots of resources to learn. There is a big difference in ropes, there is twisted and braided. You can tie knots in either, but splicing is different for braided vs twisted rope.

The splicing mentioned in this thread is with twisted rope. If you want to splice braided rope, specific that in your search

If you can type the question (how to splice ropes), you only get 8,380,000 results. The first 10 should show you how it is done.

If you type (how to splice braided rope) you get 8,660,000 results.

I love to sail, rope and knots are you friend. Even for land lubbers, learning to properly use rope can be a life saver.

This is a good source of information from Samson Rope

The "long splice" is what should be used to splice to run on the pulleys.

[marksbug]

my old friend did the braided ropes. possibly both.