Splicing rope is a great skill to have if you are an outdoor type person. I remember many Boy Scout outings as a kid with my Dad working on rope-craft. Splicing was certainly an advanced skill for the 13 year old contingent. Even so most of us mastered the short splice, long splice, end splice and eye splice. Albeit on three strand Sisal. Now perhaps I'm just old, or perhaps we just used Sisal because they didn't want to ruin the rustic feel of camping and hiking. Either way on a boat you have nothing but synthetic lines and few of them are three strand.

When I first tried to sort out double braid splicing the list of exotic tools stated as mandatory by the various references I considered was daunting. I also found the instructions I dug up somewhat vague. Several references and many bits of double braid, greatly reduced in length, later I think I have gotten the hang of it. I have a habit of explaining difficult things to myself. If I can explain it to myself, as if I were someone else, I feel pretty good about my understanding. In the process of trying to really own splicing double braid I ended up with a pictorial process that I thought might be useful to others. If you are interested you can find the link on the Links page of our web site.