toggle strength

[Stumble]

Benz,

I have pretty much removed them, and shackles from my boat. For about $3 you can make dyneema soft shackles that have a working strength of 4,000lbs, and weigh nothing.

[benz]

Dyneema shackles are not always suitable. If you put a thin dyneema cord through a eye spliced in a fatter dacron cord, the thinner line can chafe and cut at the dacron, which is softer. But speaking of dyneema soft shackes, why not splice a toggle into the soft shackle and not lose the strength that the knot takes away?

[Ian McColgin]

Do you mean toggles like you use on standing rigging, usually eye and fork but sometimes fork and fork? Like with clevis and cotter? They are for a given pin size almost always stronger than shackles and given that they are drilled for pins are more suited for the high loads of rigging. But you'd not want to feed anything flexable - wire or fibre - through the eye. So I'm thinking you mean something other than what I know as a toggle.

[benz]

Hi Ian,

Not that sort of toggle. What I mean is a little hardwood rod which you splice a line around tightly (so it can't slip out). Then you can quickly work the toggle through a loop spliced in another line, and presto! The lines are joined without a knot or a shackle. Harken is making something similar out of aluminum that they call a "Dog bone", but those are expensive and (I think) ugly. if I can find a picture of one I have made up, I'll try and post it later.
Ben

[Ian McColgin]

Ah. Of course. I should have thought of that.

[benz]

Here's a pic--not mine, but a toggle in use. Sorry I couldn't get to load as a picture.
http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:A...-3PCSo1_-o3x4w

[allene]

I have been working on this for several weeks after seeing an incorrect use of one an aluminum dog bone for a halyard on another rigging blog. There is a little trick that puts the pull force right above the head plate that one of my readers came up with. Here is how it looks on an old headboard.


I wanted the strength of aluminum but wanted it secure. I also wanted something I could make myself so that left out the doggie bone. The dog bone I saw (SOAK) was a little nicer than the Harken one but wasn't even available yet and not priced so clearly not an option. What I did was encase an aluminum rod in some tubular webbing and sew the splice to the toggle.

I wrote it all up HERE

Allen
L-36.com

[benz]

Hi Allen,

Pretty nifty--I wouldn't have thought of covering a piece of rod. I was going to have a little spliced loop that would accommodate the toggle every place that it was necessary. I don't have sails with headboards, but that's a nice way of getting the pull straight. I had considered drilling a small hole in the middle of a metal (bronze, of course) pin, spicing the line over the hole, and then carefully working a cotter pin through both legs of the loop and the hole, thus keeping the pin from slipping out of the splice. It could also be lockstitched that way...