materials for deadeyes, and lanyard question

[Brion Toss]

Hello,
First, thanks to Bill for the great wood information. Nice to know that there are good substitutes for the scarce, lovely Lignum. As for the lanyards, the stopper knot is by far the most common method, and as "traditional" has become rare, practices have tended to fossilize, sometimes regardless of merit. And the stopper knot version is much easier to produce (no landing needed in the rail), so the more elaborate version, along with things like left-laid rope on portside, right-laid rope on starboard, have largely disappeared. Nowadays, if you want innovative, unusual, and structurally superior deadeye configurations, you have to go to people who are using them in earnest: multihullers. Check out precourt.ca for some samples.
Meanwhile, I use the Ashley #880 button instead of the Matthew Walker when possible, as it is handsomer, and needs no whipping.
Fair leads,
Brion Toss

[H/V Vega]

Uh could it be that you are not finding references to that system because it didn't work quite as well in the real world of wooden boats as it did on someones drawing board? I've owned and rigged more traditional / classic/ hysterical boats than I can remember. Dead eyes are great. They work well and have a lot of shock absorbing action in them. The thing is do you really want one end of your lanyard affixed to some solid point that will not move as the rig moves? You know that weird way the down wind ones go all limp and the windward ones get all hard? Wouldn't that tend to work the lanyards in their nice little holes chaffing them just where you can't see? And then again how would you lash the standing legs together to get that "extra" tension and spring out of them ? Maybe I am just an old duffer that used to muck around in boats and now boats around in muck but I would be careful of anything that didn't make it with the working sail boats, there is usually a very good reason.

[Brion Toss]

Hi there,
If anything, taking the end of the lanyard to the rail would lessen the effects of shock loads: the strain would be distributed more evenly among the lanyard legs; and the entire load would not land on the deadeye chainplate, so the load would also be distributed better on the hull. For that matter, tuning the rig so that the leeward lanyards don't go dead slack would also be a boon.
As for those seizings, they do nothing at all to "get that "extra" tension and spring out of [the lanyards]"; the seizings are there to provide redundancy, so that if any leg of the lanyard fails, the whole won't pull out. This is exactly the kind of thing that tends to get lost as traditional arts get passed on. The logic that gave rise to the structure is forgotten or distorted, so the form that remains is vulnerable to mistaken assumptions. Even someone as deeply experienced as yourself can be tricked by this data vacuum. The only thing for it is to keep thinking, keep that original logic alive.
Fair leads,
Brion Toss