Splicing i2i in 12Sstrand hollowbraid

[Soilarch]

I promise I've tried searching...and not just ob AS. What are people doing for homemade i2i in tenex and icetail? I remember somebody somewhere doing tests with only 2" bury and no taper but cannot find it now. Any help or discusion on how you ake yours appreciated.

 

[Iustinian]

I promise I've tried searching...and not just ob AS. What are people doing for homemade i2i in tenex and icetail? I remember somebody somewhere doing tests with only 2" bury and no taper but cannot find it now. Any help or discusion on how you ake yours appreciated.

those are both VERY easy to splice with a double locking brummel. I would suggest buying the proper size fid and make sure that the bury side of your splice is at least as long as 1 fid length. i2i's are not that difficult to do, but using a snare or even a short peice of throwline with a cinching knot in it will help you get the 1st brummel splice through the 2nd ALOT easier.

it gets very confusing if you are trying to capture gear in both splices because then you have to do an inverted brummel.

make sure that you finish the splice with lock stitching, maybe even some heat shrink tubing.

as easy as it is to splice hollow braid, its easy to screw it up as well. I've got some pics of some that a colleague spliced out of tenex, and they fell apart. On the first climb. So make sure that you know what you are doing, and it would be great if you had them evaluated by a certified splicer and/or break tested before you climb on them.

tenex and ice are both very strong and you can make some great gear from them, but pay close attention to spliced gear using the locking brummel -- I dont think they would ever fall apart while they were weighted, but with slack, they bunch up very easily and thats when your final bury can work its way out. So dont go cheap on length for the final bury -- I think thats the mistake my co-worker made.

If you've never done it before, theres several vids on ytube, I can post links or even pics later if you need.

(my post is for informational purposes ONLY -- just saying)

personally, I think a much better performing, longer lasting i2i can be bought for $27 (ultra-tech, sterling RIT, Donaughy's Armor Prus, etc) that what can be made with ice and especially tenex.

 

[imagineero]

easy enough to splice with either a buried splice or a brumel, but the end product may not be as usable as what you hoped. Especially with shorter i2i's, and a buried splice.... the eyes are very stiff! Some guys are going for the commercial sewn eyes which have no stiffness, and some guys are just gong back to tieing their i2i's (well, that doesn't make any senese unless you think of the knot as an eye), which costs nothing, is adjustable, and very strong and easy to inspect. Certainly perfect your i2i length by climbing on a tied i2i before doing any splicing!

+1 on testing. I splice eyes in the end of my climb lines and have a rigorous loading/testing regime that ends up loading the eye to around 800kg before whiplocking. That's your life up there!

Shaun

 

[Soilarch]

Thanks guys. I was able to find one of threads I was looking for earlier. Turns out the magic search was "Icetail" instead of anything to do with splicing or testing or 12 strand. Haven't tried a brummel yet as I'm still getting my head around the inverted brummel...probably just have to dive in and try it for it to make sense. I agree on the product not being as useable as hoped. I tried one per man. instructions and new it would be useless as a friction hitch. (But practice makes perfect, right? Perfect is good when you hang your life on it.)They. Made one with 2" full bury and 3" of taper that has so far tested out fine even though my Martin's hitch is using some of the taper in the knot. I'm uncomfortable with that even though its done great in my rafter climbing tests. I weigh 240 with no gear and I think that may be why. I know what lenght I like and will stay on knots instead of splices till I get this panned out. I love tenexs handling just don't care for the knowledge that it will melt. (Never been as issue yet though) Plan on trying some icetail as soon as I get comfortable on my splices as I like the hollowbraids "flattening" qualities.

Any other thoughts or links from guys making their own i2i isto appreciated.

 

[imagineero]

When climbing on an i2i, efficiency is all about getting the hitch in close to you, unless you have the knot way up there on a tether so you can pull from below. If you are pulling from above the hitch, then the lower the hitch is, the more efficient you can climb. That means a harness with a low attachment point, not a high floating bridge... and also the shortest hitch cord you can get away with. So basically, splicing doesnt work. Sewn i2i's are the way to go, or knotted i2i's are just as good. EIther is going to be way better to climb on than spliced i2i's. If you are currently on a VT you might like to try the XT variant. It's a bit more predictable/stable at no real loss.

On another note, you might try beeline in 8mm if you haven't already. Very dependant on your climb rope though. I'm running 8mm beeline on poison ivy and loving it. It's a tried and tested combination that a lot of climbers are liking. The poison ivy goes well with SRT too. Not the best footlocking rope though.

Shaun