[Bob Pingel]

I did something like this once on a small dinghy -- 470 or alike. I did a full length bury without any lock stiches or brummel -- the tail went in a came out at the end of the bury with no taper. I placed a twing ball in the end of the tail to stop it from sucking into the bury. The idea was that the length of the eye would be adjustable - I think it was a traveller like arrangement. I used probably 1/4" Amsteel so the load was trivial. It worked well in this application.

The caveat here is that without the taper you are *seriously* degrading the strength of the splice -- you'll have a massive stress riser where the tail exits. I don't how much you need to detrate the splice, but it is very significant.

You are also losing the low load security of the brummel. Your application may not have low load "flopping around", but your load may come on gradually -- the brummel takes the start of the load and then transfers it to the bury as things compress.

I think the rope will heal, and will be "resplicable", Amsteel is pretty tough.

Any chance you could splice up a series of slings that you mix and match to get your length -- or work in tackle to set the length?

Another thought, could you make up the slings as needed with multiple brummels. You can throw these in quickly with no tools. They are tough to remove and would likely distort the rope beyond more than a few re-uses.

Bob