Technical ropes and splices are multiplying on board and on the decks of our ships. Obviously, splicing offers many advantages over a simple knot, starting with a much higher resistance and an impeccable finish.
To make splices, two tools stand out on the market: hollow needles and long eye needles.
Hollow needles at the top and long eye needles at the bottom
In shops, a set of needles often costs around 50 euros.
We offer you a step-by-step process to manufacture your equipment for just 3 sous?!
The necessary equipment
You need to find 1 m of single strand cable, you can buy it from the ship. Even better, do some recovery by going through a sailing school, a rigger, or a wintering site, they can probably help you by getting rid of an old monotoron cable.
Note that the monotoron name could be misleading. Indeed, the rope that Anglo-Saxons call "1/19 wire" is composed of multiple strands that surround a straight wire.
In search of the straight line
It is the stainless steel wire, hidden in the centre of the guy rope, that interests us. This is the one we're going to look for inside. To do this, the strands must be disconnected at one end and the strands separated. Be careful with your fingers, the ends are prickly.
We will soon discover a second braid inside the first one. It is stranded in the opposite direction of the first.
We're going to cancel that stranded cable again. And in the center of it, we will see the appearance of a straight stainless steel wire. We're interested in him, we'll extract him.
Make the long eye needle
Once you have insulated the stainless steel straight wire, we will fold it in half.
Then with both ends, we will form a loop and twist the remaining yarn around this loop
Once the stainless steel wire has been twisted around itself, secure the twists with tape and make sure that the exterminated ones do not pose any danger to the fingers.
And here is your long-cat splicing needle ready to use, so get to work matelots?!
