On Oct 8, 9:05 pm, Brian Whatcott wrote:
On Tue, 09 Oct 2007 00:47:02 GMT, Jere Lull wrote:
[Don't worry, all of us who have been around for a while have done
stupider things. Some of us are strong enough to admit to them. (I'm
not sure I'm one of that crowd.)]

I made up stays with crimped ferrules this Spring. In the first good
blow on a lake one lower main stay came adrift; the upper held up the
mast, while it bowed, interestingly, until I took in sail.

When I looked at my ferrule crimp, I saw that I had been unhappy with
the out of round crimp, and had recrimped it at right angles.

That's a very good thing not to do. Double ferrules lead to peace of
mind too, I decided.

Brian Whatcott Altus OK

I wish I'd gone with Norseman or Staylok instead of swaged terminals
when I rerigged. From what I see on the web, they last much longer
with no cracking of the swaged area. I kept all my old rigging
intending to post pics of the tiny nearly invisible cracks in them but
that site I posted a link to had a good pic of such.

On Mon, 08 Oct 2007 18:22:30 -0700, Frogwatch
wrote:

I wish I'd gone with Norseman or Staylok instead of swaged terminals
when I rerigged. From what I see on the web, they last much longer
with no cracking of the swaged area.

I think that's a good plan if you have a way to load test them to SWL
off the boat. Otherwise you really need a *lot* of confidence in your
workmanship.

On Oct 8, 9:41 pm, Wayne.B wrote:
On Mon, 08 Oct 2007 18:22:30 -0700, Frogwatch
wrote:

I wish I'd gone with Norseman or Staylok instead of swaged terminals
when I rerigged. From what I see on the web, they last much longer
with no cracking of the swaged area.

I think that's a good plan if you have a way to load test them to SWL
off the boat. Otherwise you really need a *lot* of confidence in your
workmanship.

I am an expert at overestimating my abilities.

On Mon, 08 Oct 2007 19:47:26 -0700, Frogwatch
wrote:

I think that's a good plan if you have a way to load test them to SWL
off the boat. Otherwise you really need a *lot* of confidence in your
workmanship.

I am an expert at overestimating my abilities.

=====================================

Aren't we all. Boats have a way of finding us out however.

:-

Subject

Haven't done any serious cable design for many years.

That said, cables have their applications but are designed with
serious safety factors applied.

The weakest point of the cable design is the termination and/or the
splice.

In addition, hidden corrosion at the termination also weakens the
cable system over time.

One of the biggest unknows in cable design is fatigue failure due to
vibration induced by the winds.

Just ask any electrical power distribution company why they have all
those funny looking things hanging on their cables in what appear to
be unusual positions.

(One of my fraternity brothers was chief engineer for a company that
helped solve many of the cable fatigue proplems.)

Those same fatigue failure problems apply to sailboat rigging.

Bottom Line..................................
There is a hell of a lot we don't know about what happens to a cable,
when loaded, thus BIG saftey fsctors are required.

Lew

On 2007-10-08 21:41:39 -0400, Wayne.B said:

On Mon, 08 Oct 2007 18:22:30 -0700, Frogwatch
wrote:

I wish I'd gone with Norseman or Staylok instead of swaged terminals
when I rerigged. From what I see on the web, they last much longer
with no cracking of the swaged area.

I think that's a good plan if you have a way to load test them to SWL
off the boat. Otherwise you really need a *lot* of confidence in your
workmanship.

I believe that a Norsman or Staylok job is more likely done better by
amateurs than the usual "professional" job done by swagers.

Swaging depends upon deforming stainless stock in a controlled manner,
but there isn't a direct method of determining that the deformation was
properly performed. A poor swage won't show it's face for years. A
Norsman or Staylok job can be reviewed immediately.

--
Jere Lull
Tanzer 28 #4 out of Tolchester, MD
Xan's new pages: http://web.mac.com/jerelull/iWeb/Xan/
Our BVI pages: http://homepage.mac.com/jerelull/BVI/