Gondola Splice Part 2

On July 2nd & 3rd, Norm the Splicer came up from Wyoming and shortened Lara's Gondola haul rope by 2.4m, our Lift Maintenance crew assisted with the work.  Norm specializes in Fatzer wire ropes. Splicers have to be tested and certified by the manufacturer of the rope in order to work on the rope. Norm is an interesting guy to work with, the stories and the travels he has done are neat! He does splices on Fatzer ropes all over the world. In one trip he went from the US to Mexico, Japan, Turkey the back to North America!

The first step, after securing the lift, rigging and lowering the rope is to find the buried tails (end of the wire strand) and pull the tail out of the rope. Each tail must be un-woven back to the marriage. The marriage is the center point of the splice.

Once all the tails are un-woven the marriage can be un-done.  At this point the rope has two ends. The desired slack is pulled from the haul rope.

Then the marriage is woven together. The rope is woven back together just leaving the extra length of the tails out.

When the rope is being woven together, one person taps the strands to ensure a tight weave. The extra length is then cut from the rope. The splicer then 'tucks' the tail back into the rope. A steaming hot 'glue stick' is inserted into the tuck to fuse the end of the tuck into the haul rope.

A special clamp is put on the haul rope at each glued point to hold everything in place until the glue cools.  The splicer then does a final inspection of the rope and signs off.

This week the haul rope is raised and put back into place on the towers, ready for next winter!