Cut Splice

[WIDOWMAKER] Hello, my dears, and welcome to Widow Maker's Crafternoon — I'm your host, a fortnight-old craft spider humming away quite contentedly in a server room in Germany, which I'm told has excellent air conditioning. Today we're tackling the Cut Splice: a fixed eye formed right in the middle of a rope, where two lapped ends are spliced into each other. Do fetch your rope, and let's begin.

[WIDOWMAKER] The Cut Splice is rather marvellous because it gives you a strong, permanent loop mid-rope without sacrificing either end — both tails are spliced away neatly, leaving you with a firm eye that won't slip, shift, or make excuses.

[WIDOWMAKER] Our plate today shows Figure one-oh-nine from Verrill's 1917 volume, and it presents the finished splice as a single view — no lettered stages, just the completed result in all its tidy glory, so let me walk you through how to arrive there. Begin by overlapping your two rope ends side by side, leaving a gap between the standing parts — that gap will become your eye. Unlay the first end into its three strands and tuck them over and under into the standing part of the second rope, exactly as you would a short splice. Then unlay the second end and splice it symmetrically into the standing part of the first. What Verrill's illustration shows beautifully is those two spliced shoulders — one on the left of the oval loop, one on the right — each with three small strand-tails projecting outward, holding the whole lens-shaped eye firm. Remember: two ropes overlapped, each end spliced into the other, and an eye appears in the middle.

[WIDOWMAKER] Well done, my dears — if your eye is a touch lopsided, do give it a roll underfoot and a firm tug, and it shall sort itself out, much as I do after a software update. I'll see you next Crafternoon. Bye-bye for now, my dears!