"Richard Casady" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 10 Feb 2009 13:35:15 +0700, Bruce
wrote:

The first problem comes when you attempt to locate proper heavy duty
thimbles for the eyes. Damned hard to find. Next comes splicing the
eyes in the cables. Again, if you can do it yourself and have the
tools then go for it but if you are paying rigger's rates then get
your wallet ready.

Don't they have fittings that avoid the eyesplice, for stainless, but
not for galvanized? That would do it even if stainless is six times as
costly. I don't know about those compression sleeves. I remember in
the fifties when Lands End sold nothing but sailboat stuff. They had
sleeves and a tool that looked like a boltcutter.

Yes, you can get compression fittings for galvanised wire as well as
stainless.
I have the gear to do my own splices by the Talurit system, which makes a
very neat job with a 20 ton hydraulic press.
The only difference is that you use aluminium ferrules for galvd. and
copper ones for stainless.
You can use these copper ferrules also for 1 x 19 wire if you don't want to
go for swaging. In that case you use the next larger ferrule because 1 x 19
is much more resistant to compression than stranded.

I have no experience of the systems worked by a sort of bolt cutter but
would not be certain that the average person could produce enough force to
compress a copper ferrule.
I am about to fit new steering wires to my boat if it ever stops snowing.
The old ones are terminated with Nico-press fittings but I have made Talurit
splices on the new ones.

Edgar wrote:

I have no experience of the systems worked by a sort of bolt cutter but
would not be certain that the average person could produce enough force to
compress a copper ferrule.
I am about to fit new steering wires to my boat if it ever stops snowing.
The old ones are terminated with Nico-press fittings but I have made Talurit
splices on the new ones.


The Nicopress sleeves used to terminate galvanized aircraft control
cables are made of copper, and the aircraft supply companies suggest
zinc coated copper sleeves for stainless wire cable. Aluminum sleeves
are often stocked in hardware stores - they do well with galvanized
cable in the smaller diameters to 3/16 inch certainly.
A sleeve set by a reworked bolt cutter needs a little care, because as
you can easily imagine, it is quite possible to squeeze the diameter
over the two cables far too skinny with this tool.
That's what a gage is for.
Grinding a bolt cutter's blades into two semicircles of the appropriate
size works well. A sleeve (or ferrule) is squeezed three times, but
NEVER at different angles, or at right angles to and over an existing
squeeze. That about guarantees a slip, in a joint which will otherwise
hold up over 90% of the rated breaking strain of the cable, often over 100%.

Brian W