I wonder if anyone can help me. I need to splice three manila ropes together in order to make a swing. I need to splice 2 ropes coming up from the swing with one rope coming down - as in this picture.
http://www.marniemoyle.co.uk/Swing3.htm
Can anyone explain how this has been done...or point me in the direction of a site that explains it?
Thanks!
Greetings!
Firstly, let's try to look at your situation from a general perspective.
You say that you need to splice
3 ropes together to make a swing;
but do you really?
And --further-- do you really need or want to have a swing so
structured: lines from each end of the swing seat rising up
to be fused into a single line anchored high?! -- as contrasted
with the two lines remaining independent and each being
anchored!? For the single-line structure is going to yield
much turning/twisting of the swinger, and not *sail straight*.
Normally, one wants to avoid such turning. However, if your
high anchor is so sloped or somehow otherwise constrained
to preclude dual-line anchoring, well, you'll have to live w/that.
Now, to the point about a trio of ropes vs. one: the structure
sketched by Fairlead of a big eye splice cut into half at the end
of its eye can give you what you want in a single rope; it will
be eyespliced up high, and again on each end (with either the
Stopper-knot terminations beneath the seat as your image shows,
or an uncut eye through the seat (rope run down through one
hole & back up through the other, then spliced).
(Oh, btw/FYI, the joints in your image are eye splices (though it
raises a philosophical/definitional issue at the seat since they do
not actually make "eyes").)
I should remark that the splices could be bowlines, which you'll
find more easily made & adjusted; these knots will wear less well,
and ideally should have their ends seized (bound to an adjoining
part of the structure (e.g., to an eye leg) with small cord, by
making lots of tight wraps and tying off).
Now, if for some reason one actually must (or really wants to) use
three ropes, ideally the single one into which the two from-seat-side
ropes will fuse will be thicker, and there is a way to effectively
splice the two into the one such that pairs of strands from the
two will act as single strands married into the thicker single
strands. (Keeping in mind, too, that this is a just a swing,
after all, and even with the obesity of Modern Man there won't
be that much force on the cordage!)
Realize that if the from-seat-sides ropes do merge, then they
will be pinching the swinger a little, depending upon how high
above the seat this union comes.
--dl*
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