Manila Climbing Rope: Eye Splice, Whippings, and Chafe Protection

Practical Knots
1

I bought a plain manila rope, 1.5" diameter, 3-strand twisted, and 30 ft. long. It’s the standard kind of rope that has been used forever for military training, gym class, etc. I am going to install the following on the rope: an eye splice, chafe protection on the eye splice, and whippings to seal off the eye splice. I have an idea of how I want to do these things, but I want to tap the brain trust here to see if anybody has any better ideas.

Eye Splice
For the eye-splice, it’s nothing unusual. I’m just going to splice a few rounds. I don’t plan to taper the splice, unless somebody can convince why I should. The eye of the splice will be just big enough to put the 1.5" rope through it.

Chafe Protection for Eye
For the chafe protection, here is where things get interesting. I plan to whip 550 paracord onto the eye of the splice. I have never seen this done before. So, I don’t have any pics. I’ll take pics after I do it, unless somebody can describe a better way to have chafe protection.

Whippings on Splice End
For the whippings on the end of the splice, I plan to whip each strand with 2 mm nylon cordage. I’ll probably do a simple common whipping there. Then, I am going to whip the entire end of the splice with 2 mm nylon cordage or 550 parachord. I’ll probably do a sailmaker’s whipping there.

The attached pic is a rough idea of what the final product will look like. However, the details are described above.

2

What’s the purpose of the rope & your intended modifications
–to what use do you intend to put it? [*1]

Many things should work okay, including what you say.
For chafe, who knows, there might be some way for you
to find and work into it some leather pieces!? (I’m at
a loss now to think of where something like this might
be found as discarded item --well, sometimes one can find
old work gloves (often just one : but hang onto the one,
and then you might get two (for use as gloves, i.e. --have
recently done so myself!)), which are leather-reinforced.
.:. You’d like to have some chafe guard that can be replaced,
should it wear out or prove deficient!

There are many splices one can play with. One way of getting
a taper is to do so “by-strand” : i.e., tuck each of the three
strands increasing amounts --e.g., 3-4-5–, and their ends
should protrude like a rooster tail, and the main rope will
thus open gradually (for first just one, then two, then all
three insertions of material). This can make for a more
comfortably flexible neck of the splice, vs, having the
main rope open for all three strands at once.

Sometimes, folks w/trad all-ends-at-same-point splices
split the strands and whip/seize halves of adjacent ends
together (so, e.g,. strand-1 half is joined across a main-rope
strand to be seized-whipped to strand-1 half, and so on
(think of little people being the strand-ends, reaching
left & right to neighboring strands to hold hands).

Whipping rope makes it INflexible at that point and around
it, so my thinking that for a 3-4-5 by-strand taper being
nicely whipped perhaps by whippings on either side of #4
would defeat the flexibility I attributed to the splice neck!
(But, that might be okay for your purpose.)

[*1] By the sound of it --i.e., size of eye–, you intend to make some
sort of noose : able to fit this very rope end through the eye!?

–dl*

3

Thanks, I’ll be using the rope for rope climbing exercises, like ropes used for military training, gym class, etc. In my garage, I have a 1" diameter pipe mounted on the ceiling. The rope will be attached by using a Girth Hitch via the eye splice. This setup provides the ability to remove the rope quickly and easily attach the rope outside on a tree branch. I know my usage here is old stuff, but it’s all new to me.

4

It’s not the prettiest, but it gets the job done.

20150803-ClimbingRope 001.jpg

5

Looks like it will do what you want it to Z.

Now how will you protect the tree? :wink:

Happy climbing!

SS

6

Got any ideas? I suppose I could place something between the tree and the rope, but that get’s tricky when the branch is way up there like this:

https://youtu.be/7XB5cE3sRWw

7

This hefty tree branch doesn’t even notice the rope is there.

20150806-ClimbingRopeTree 001b.jpg