I used to have a Hood furler
with a continuous loop furling line. When it came time to replace the furling line, I decided to try to do a "Constant Diameter" splice (instructions are online at a number of rope maker sites, like New England Ropes -- see link)). I am pretty good at common splicing and so thought this would be no big deal. I decided to practice on some spare lines first. I bet I wasted a few hundred miles of line trying to master that damn splice -- and I never did. As you know, it must be done on the boat, which makes it a bit harder, too. In the end, what I did was a "workaround" that, like its name, worked. I used dacron double braid. I first looped the line through the deck fairleads and around the drum and back. I then cut the two ends of the line on a diagonal with a utility knife that I heated with a butane torch. I cut these lines on a diagonal and the hot knife produced nice smooth and fused surfaces. I then slipped a larger piece of heat shrink tubing (about 4 inches long) over one end of the line. I then butted the two ends together and, using some really tough dacron whipping thread, began to sew the two ends together using about one-inch loops all around the line. Then I slipped the heat shrink over the sewn ends, heated it up to shrink it. Whole thing took less than an hour and that "pseudo splice" in the line was solid and tough. Worked very well going around the teeth in the drum. I could not buy and use a pre-spliced line, as Steve O. suggests above, as there would be no way to thread the furling line through the fixed fairleads. I would have had to use something like snatch blocks which would be very costly and impractical. Having said all this, my pal Jim Seamans used the Brion Toss video, and bought his special splicing wands, to do this splice. He told me that using the video and special tools made the splice "easy." Take your choice....
