More splicing advice, please

Quickstep192 · #1 05-26-2008

I'm still trying to splice a small eye in Marlow Braid and finding it quite difficult. My last attempt has caused me to develop two questions.

Q1: In the Marlow instructions shown here , they show fishing the core through the cover for a distance of 35cm (that's 14") PLUS the length of the eye. In my attempt, that proved impossible. I'm wondering if that distance should be different based on the diameter of line I'm splicing. In other instructions, I've seen measurements based on fid lengths or diameters.

Q2: I stumbled across these instructions which appear to make it considerably easier and get the core from the eye inside the core of the standing part of the line. Also, since the core from the eye is going inside the core of the standing part, it seems like it might actually be stronger. This assumes of course that the strength of the line is all in the core and doesn't rely on the cover and I don't know if that's the case with Marlow Braid or not.

Any thoughts, opinions or advice are greatly appreciated. I'm close to just having someone do the splice for me, but I don't quit so easily.

sailingdog · #2 05-26-2008

The problem is that you can't use a normal double braid type splice, since marlow uses a LAID LINE for the core. You can't even do a core-to-core splice, since that requires braided core.

What tools are you using. I've done this using a Toss Splicing Wand, and it's not too bad...but with anything else, it is almost impossible.

Quickstep192 · #3 05-26-2008

You know, now I'm wondering what I really have here. The cover sure looks like MarlowBraid, but the core is certainly not laid. It's 12 strand braid. That would lead me to believe its double braid, but the braid in the cover is much tighter than Marlow's double braid and looks more like MarlowBraid. Here's a picture of the core and cover side by side.

sailingdog · #4 05-26-2008

It'd help a lot more if that photo was even close to being in focus.

Doesn't look like a Marlow Braid line... I've been working with Marlow Braid and Marlow Excel Plus quite a bit in the last month... and it's definitely a laid core rope... what you've got isn't.

Quickstep192 · #5 05-27-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by sailingdog

It'd help a lot more if that photo was even close to being in focus.

Yeah, I know. See if this one is any better now that I have the benefit of some daylight. My stuff definetly came off of a Marlow Reel, but I can't find anything on Marlow's website that matches it. The Cover is 24 braid, but it's really tightly woven like that on Marlow Braid. The core is 12 braid and is very loosely woven. I first tried to do a cover in core and core in cover eye, but the core is so loosely woven that it just falls apart once it's cut. Arghhhhh.

sailingdog · #6 05-27-2008

Where did you buy it?? Just because it came off a Marlow reel doesn't mean it is Marlow line, since some places re-cycle the spools.

Lion35 · #7 05-27-2008

You might want to try posting the question (what line is it?) to Brian Toss' forum.

SparTalk - SparTalk

I haven't spliced Marlow before but the Toss splicing wand is a great tool for double braid and parallel core.

Quickstep192 · #8 05-29-2008

I followed Lion's advice and posted a picture of my line on the Brian Toss forum. In case anyone's interested, here is what I found out. The website is a goldmine of splicing information.

The line you're looking at/pictured is Marlowbarid MB12. It's a latter day version of the original Marlow Braid which had the hawser laid core.

It does splice like a convential double braid but one should leave a tad bit more room (ie extract a bit more core) as the 24 strand tweedy cover does not have as much give as a line such as Sta-Set or XLS. Also the core is a little less well made up than those types of line (thus it requires a little "gentler" handling), which must be the trade off for beefing up the cover.