Nice Rope Ends without a Hot Knife
- Thread starter Amy
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Mark Wright
Active member
Fulk said:
And the knife is usually hot enough to round off the sharp edges of the two cut ends.
Mark
Masking tape burns a bit and makes the edges all nice and actually gets the core well melded with sheath, in my experience. Tried a few tapes and it just works best and pulls off easiest at the end for me. Some, like scotch tape, doesn't work at all.
As to the just make a knife hot, had much troubles with it not actually sealing the ends well, this method gets it hotter and really melts it all together never had issue with it crunching open or core pulling / moving within the sheath end.
But to each their own, this is my fav method and figured I'd share
As to the just make a knife hot, had much troubles with it not actually sealing the ends well, this method gets it hotter and really melts it all together never had issue with it crunching open or core pulling / moving within the sheath end.
But to each their own, this is my fav method and figured I'd share
andrewmcleod
Well-known member
Fulk said:
I used to do that, then stopped making a mess of my knife and just stuck the rope in the flame instead (after cutting carefully with the knife). Seems to work just as well...
Well, andrew, not long since a friend of ours had new cows' tails that she had not cut to length, and decided to do so at the entrance to a cave; she sliced through one end, and immediately about 5?6 cm of rope unravelled. Fortunately someone had some insulating tape with them, and was able to bind the ends up for her.
andrewmcleod
Well-known member
Fulk said:
I obviously have mad rope-slicing skills
just don't use scissors as this doesn't work very well; I use a knife with no serrations on a breadboard with clean downwards pressure as the aim is to avoid disturbing the rope until you get it in the flame. Never had any problem doing this if you are careful...MJenkinson
Member
I was faced with this issue last week (having never cut rope before), but using the issue as an excuse I just went a bought a blow torch and a paint scraper. Worked a treat.
andrewmcleod
Well-known member
Fulk said:
On an unrelated note, I have unfortunately learned to spot insulating tape in caves, and now I am forever picking bits of it up - it's amazing how much of it there can be! Is it really all just from falling off krabs or then end of ropes etc?
My krabs are all marked with ToughTags which don't tend to come off in the same way (although they do wear down), and I use heatshrink with adhesive for marking the end of ropes.
cavemanmike
Well-known member
i bought a lighter fuel powerd hot knife/soldering iron/small blow torch in one thingy from maplins for about ?15 years ago and works a treat in all it's functions
NewStuff
New member
cavemanmike said:i bought a lighter fuel powerd hot knife/soldering iron/small blow torch in one thingy from maplins for about ?15 years ago and works a treat in all it's functions
Yup, same here, mine is almost identical to this.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Maplin-30W-to-100W-3-in-1-Gas-Soldering-Iron-Kit-Blue-Torch-Hot-Air-Blower-New-/400850710904?hash=item5d54907178:g:BqEAAOSwnDxUqNmz
Personally, I find cheap soldering guns to be pretty good - they can sometimes need a bit of on/off action with the trigger to avoid the tip heating to ignition point, but I think the last one I bought in Lidl was only about ?10.Amy said:
Not quite as nice as a 'proper' rope knife, but not too far off, and the working parts heat up (and cool down) fairly quickly.
For an off-grid mountaintop alternative (or even an underground alternative if the rope is dry), cutting tape-wrapped rope with a knife and melting with a jet lighter (a bit like the youtube video) can work rather well.
The dealextreme jet lighters:
http://www.dx.com/p/jet-1300-c-butane-lighter-1320#.V7-I1q3wqdU
can be pretty good.
Their main design fault (button jamming) is generally fixable. They need tuning for flow (screw on the bottom), sometimes the jet needs to be given a hard blow if dust gets into it, and the recent ones have a rubber stand which stinks like tar on a hot summer day but which seems pointless anyway and can be discarded, and they take ages to arrive - DX always seem to try regular post and then the package gets rejected for airmail because it contains empty lighters and gets sent by alternative means at about the pace of a camel.
Best allow a couple of months for delivery.
But apart from that, they're fine. I usually buy a few, and treat them as semi-disposable, and they're vastly better for many things than normal lighters. They seem to fill with butane well, and hold a decent amount.