Blister

The 10mm knitting needles arrived in the post and I immediately took one out to the workshop and cut an end off.

Great… it’s both hollow and made of metal rather than the expected plastic.

What is not so great is the internal diameter of the needle is smaller than the rope.  I’ve overcome that by removing some of the rope threads at the end to create a cone.  This was then taped together with electrical insulation tape.

I now had a DIY Fid.  Unfortunately I couldn’t get the Fid down the core of the orange rope.  My suspicion is I’ve made too many previous attempts on this piece of rope and the inside is “hairy” which is snagging the inserted cord.

However my luck changed as the courier arrived with the 30 metres of blue Dyneema tow rope I’d ordered online. 

The crazy part of this is it was cheaper to buy the complete tow rope than Dyneema rope by the metre.  Way cheaper!!!

.My knitting needle Fid and 16 gauge wire “pusher”. 

It took some juggling around but I managed to get the Fid and rope through the centre of the Dyneema.

No doubt you can see my error in the above photo!  I’ve managed to get the measurement wrong and there isn’t enough rope on the end of the Fid to tie a diamond knot.

Got the tails the same length on my second attempt but they were very short making tying the diamond knot rather difficult.

Second soft shackle with longer tails and some black protective sleeving I’ve recycled from the original tow rope.

The finished product with lighter to provide a perspective of size.

Next I wanted to make a ‘Bridle Strap’.  A You Tube video explained how to make a simple “Longbury’ eye splice in Dyneema.  However this splice isn’t as strong as the more complicated ‘Mobius Brummel Locking Splice’.  I decided strength was important and opted to create my ‘eyes’ in the ends of the Bridle Strap using this latter method.

My Bridle Strap connects to the recovery points on the 4x4 with two soft shackles.  Using the bridle strap means any load is being shared across the recovery points.  Less strain on the recovery points and hopefully minimising the risk of twisting the chassis.

At the end of the day all the Dyneema has been used and I have 11 soft shackles and two bridle straps.  Plus one blister!

I might now have a further attempt at creating soft shackles from the orange rope.

My thanks to readers who sent suggestions on how I might achieve all of this.