I am replacing my lifelines with the New England Rope STS-WR2 dyneema but am having a hell of a time splicing eyes into it. Can anyone give some tips on accomplishing this? The cover is so tightly woven that it is impossible to run a fid down into it to bury anything other than the existing core. It certainly wont splice like normal double braid....I'm at a loss.

Are you compressing it together to widen the diameter? Is the fid too big?

I have a question for you too. Once you get an eye on one side of the line, how do you do the other end? At one point, it would require you to pull the opposite end, that aleady has an eye, back through. (maybe there are other ways to splice dyneema, I'm no splicing expert)

I've seen all sorted of knotted ends on synthetic lifelines, but don't love that look. If you could splice both ends, that would be nice.

I love to splice all of my lines but doing Dyneema double-braid is always a chore and particularly difficult when the outer braid is tight. I find that my rubber mallet helps a lot, and will also resort to tapering the inner and outer cores more than the recommended amount (the lengths remain the same, I just "thin" more strands). When I did my lifelines with Dyneema on my last boat, I used single-braid and classic lashings which I would occasionally tighten as the Dyneema did it's slow creep.

If you absolutely cannot get a spliced eye into that line, then you could revert to sewing/whipping in an eye; with appropriate line and perhaps by combining sewing and a tight lashing you could make an eye that is almost as good as a spliced one and certainly sufficient for safety reasons (there is information out on the web regarding sewing on such items as jacklines which is quite informative regarding the strengths when using different methods).

Minnewaska - he's doing a double-braid splice, which doesn't require the line to be pulled through as one would need on a single-braid line using the Brummel splice. And since the single-braided dyneema lets you compress the line enough to make an opening wide enough to pull an eye through, that isn't a problem (I've use that method to get eyes on both ends of the line).

refer to Brion Toss' splice, he does not bury the cover, but whips it at the throat after it makes the turn round the eye.

Ah. Didn't pick up on that.

Did you use single braid at one point for lifelines? I've not tried to pull an eye through a brummel splice, but if it's possible, that would make a nice neat job to have an eye at each end.

Chafe protection is still a concern for me, but I'm thinking about this. New lifelines are in my relatively near future.

I did use single braid Dyneema SK75 for lifelines on the previous boat. I managed to pull an eye through on a Brummel splice to get a line with 2 eyes, but I never managed to get the length right. In the end I end up using a simple splice with buried tail and whipping on one end and a Brummel on the other, that way I could adjust the length of the line so that I could put in a lashing. I think I only have one picture:

BTW you do not need to use both ends to do a Brummel splice http://www.neropes.com/Splicing%20Gu...0_Brummell.pdf
here is the instruction for WR2. It is not a normal double braid splice. http://www.teufelberger.com/fileadmi...WR2_Splice.pdf

That's exactly the way I did it. Lashing works very well and allows adjustments when the 12 strand stretches over time, which it will. I strongly recommend using 12 strand instead of a double braid. It is SO much easier to work with.

How much stretch can in expect in the single strand? If I put an eye out the side of one of the current adjustable turnbuckles, I could use them for slack removal. I'm guessing that good enough for about an inch.

Aren't you guys worried about burning the lifeline with sheet whip?