Rope and cord end finishing

After years of reading how people prefer to cut their ropes and cord, I finally wanted to put this out there. I get that its more involved than what most people are willing do for clean and strong ends. Also most will not have this stuff laying around, but if you do get a chance to try it, you may never finish your ends with a bic or worry about using a hot knife to cut your rope or cord again. It even works to bond the dynema core to the nylon sheath after cutting titan cord. If you know a better way to do that, I would love to hear it.

Aside from your rope or cord you need map gas and torch. Propain may work but map burns hotter. Also needed is some sort of metal to heat up and use like a hot iron. I use a 3/16” scrap piece of copper. Whatever you use it needs to retain some heat after the initial smash. Also needed is some pliers that you dgaf if heat will ruin the business ends of. Most importantly you need the clamp component from a copper pipe flaring tool set. You can find these pretty cheap on craigslist and pawn shops.

 1.  Cut your rope or cord using whatever method. No tape or hot knife needed. Let a rat chew through it even. As long as the full sheath sticks out of the top of the clamp along with the core you are good.  

5mm Titan cord

2.  Clamp it in the best hole size for your material, with at least 1/8” sticking out of the top.

3.  Heat your iron material with your torch. I find that this piece of copper is perfect once its slightly glowing. I like copper because the heat is distributed very even throughout the piece. Any thinner and I don’t think it would work well. 

4.  While still faintly glowing, smash the material down untill the iron is flat against the clamp and then make sure to hold it there for maybe 10 seconds after they touch. You want the core and sheath to bond together and for heat to penetrate into the core as much as possible. There will be smoke and lots of it! Especially if doing this to a dry treated rope. Sometime fire too sometimes not. It stinks so definitely do it outside! 

5.  Let it cool down a bit before taking your rope or cord out of the clamp. If done right it will look like this.  Who knows whats in the leftover residue but you can scrape it off easy with a razor blade afterwards. For me it usually has the consistency and oder of old skiwax and bong water mixed together. Not sure exactly what it is but it seams to coincide with dry treated materials. 

8mm mammut phoenix and 7mm cord.

Some 5/8” bluewater rope I believe.

It works on many different sizes and lasts longer than many factory rope ends iv'e had. The clamp keeps the sheath neat and keeps the diameter the same or slightly smaller than it once was. The hot iron obliterates whatever is sticking out of the top and gets the heat into the core so that it is all bonded together. It takes a little practice but its so much nicer than fiddling around with mushroomed rope ends and titan cord that has pompom ends that make it impossible to thread. 

Can you create conical shaped channel in the die? - I climbed a couple of times on a rope that had tapered ends, it looked like a nice idea.

amarius wrote:

Can you create conical shaped channel in the die? - I climbed a couple of times on a rope that had tapered ends, it looked like a nice idea.

Oh ya im sure I could make one and make it happen.

Foy O wrote:

How well does this hold up?

Real well. Like I said, better than most factory ends. At least mammuts ends. Ive had many of their ropes and the ends have always came apart at some point. Titan cord done like this lasts a real long time too as long as you do a good job.

Would it be less likely or more likely to get stuck in the rock. Because I was climbing one time and as I was pulling the rope the little cap that factory’s put on the end of the rope got wedged in a crack.

Lord Christ that is involved!

Lol.

Tuesday morning motivational:   I once had this bright idea of applying to each rope end some clear shrink wrap tubing with label underneath showing date of purchase and length of rope. This was for a locker full of ropes of varying lengths and ages. Egad did those tend to hang up in the links during a pull.

I take and heat the rope end with a lighter. Then grab some garbage out of the trash (chip bag, granola bar wrapper, wax paper, whatever) and then use the trash to taper the ends. You have to melt it a few times but you kinda end up with a tapered bullet like dome on the end. It holds up really well, and it makes it very simple to feed through knots that are a little snug.

https://www.amazon.com/SeaSense-50014090-Rope-Cutting-Gun/dp/B004XAD2IU

I take a lighter heat it up & then push it hard on the ground, I want a lip. I want to know where the end of the rope is at all times even in the dark. If I make a mistake I want to feel the end & be able to lock down on it.

If you have a Weller soldering gun, they sell the rope cutter attachment by itself cheap. Looks like this one I pulled off the net below. Takes about 10 seconds to make a perfect cut through your rope or webbing. 

Bill Lawry wrote:

Lol.

Tuesday morning motivational:   I once had this bright idea of applying to each rope end some clear shrink wrap tubing with label underneath showing date of purchase and length of rope. This was for a locker full of ropes of varying lengths and ages. Egad did those tend to hang up in the links during a pull.

I put tags on the rope bags. Simply reinforce the hole and put it on with a nylon cable tie. Furthermore, I color code the tags, yellow for static and blue for dynamic. I toss the yellow tags over there on that shelf and the blue tags together in a group elsewhere. If I ever chop a rope, which there are 2 currently in my quiver, I note it on the tag in large black felt tip writing. Todays phat 11mm ropes for aid become tomorrows phat ropes for toproping and I'll keep a rope out to @10 years in this manner before I cut it up and use the pieces for fixed anchors or setting up toproping anchors. I had a couple toproping anchor ropes that likely were 30 years old before I retired them. One hung a porch swing/Christmas gift I made. 

So:

Name Brand  -Date of Purchase

Diameter and Length

Thus:

Beal Joker - 05/20/2016

9.1mm X 60M

Becomes:

Beal Joker - 05/20/2016

9.1mm X 47M  (with a large diagonal line through it so I see something is remiss)

This is an awesome idea, those ends look fantastic; and I can finally put my old brake line flaring tool to use again! Don't have any scrap copper though... what does 3/16" sheet copper even get used for?

Have you tried this for a Technora core like 5.9 PowerCord?

I’m stoked to finally have a chance to use this method!

Thanks for posting this!

Demetri V wrote:

Have you tried this for a Technora core like 5.9 PowerCord?

Sorry never saw this way back when. No, I never tried this method with any of the Aramid core cords. I never liked how stiff they stay and how weak they are when they are knotted. Not to mention how weak they get over time. I imagine the sheath would never stay with the core and strands would just wonder out over time unless the ends are at knots. It’s still my go to method, and that reminds me I definitely have some frayed ends to finally get around to fixing!