Soft Halyard or Line Shackle

[Anton B]

I attached the one end in several different ways, only in order to get the length right, not having taken any care in the length of the connecting line. None of which affected how they broke.

They broke at the end of the bury in the spliced line for the most part. The eye and the knot breaking were anomalies.

I will re-do the test with more care, and better pictures and I hope I will confirm that the breaking point will consistently be the bury and not the knot, and not the eye, but we shall see.

I am pretty sure I have already proved that it will break at close to line strength, in the application the tension is probably less than 20% of breaking strength even at peak loads, I just wanted to make sure that there wouldn't be some freak situation at the diamond knot that would give me less than 50% strength.

What I am doing is exactly like Allen's Soft Halyard, only with more diamond knots. In 9 test pulls, it never broke at the diamond knot closest to the loop, only at the last knot, the one the eye was pulling on, and seemed to break at about 80% of line strength.

I'm pretty happy with that.