Fids

Ryan Mooney

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While waiting for the glue to dry turned a couple of fids for braiding and knot work.

Top to bottom; mystery wood, lyptus, and ebony.
IMG_20150913_191258094.jpg

Good skew practice and a nice way to use up some small stuff if you know anyone into knots.

Kind of enjoyed turning the ebony actually. Sharp skew and high speed turns like a dream.

The lyptus handle I tried a new texturing idea and just took a whole lot of small divots out leaving behind a bunch of tiny facets. Doesn't really look like much (maybe better in a brighter wood) but feels really nice in the hand.
 
I'm one of the thirty or so people on the planet who know what a fid is, besides a good short Scrabble word. I used to do splices and eyes and backsplices, but I never used rope that was so heavy I couldn't separate the lay with my hands.Maybe I should make one and put it in the tool box, just so that when someone asks what it is, I can say, "Oh, that's a fid."
 
Some of the really hard twist rope can be a bit of a bear to splice without a fid - especially mid line (like for a cut splice, bight splice, cringles or similar) but yeah most of the time its not to hard to get the splice laid in without a fid. It does make it a bit easier to work the splice tight though.

Generally I find it more useful for knot work when you're trying to work a knot tight around something (like say as a wrap for fid handle ;)) it can be really hard to pick up the strands without something like a fid or marlinspike.

I'd bet there are more than 50 of us though - all those sailors out there.. somewhere..
 
Dad always talked about a fid when he was doing rope work. As an ex Royal Navy guy of his era splicing ropes or doing decorative knots was something he learnt pretty well. Like carving its a great pastime.
Handy to have a fid though. He had a smooth metal one.
Had a good rope knot app on my phone until recently. Gosh now cannot find it.


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Dad always talked about a fid when he was doing rope work. As an ex Royal Navy guy of his era splicing ropes or doing decorative knots was something he learnt pretty well. Like carving its a great pastime.
Handy to have a fid though. He had a smooth metal one.
It's funny, I got to tour a fiber laying ship a few years back which is somewhere up near the top of technogeeks as far as shops go but there were fancy know decorating a good chunk of the main cabin. There were even quite a few interesting functional knots still being used on the deck to hold various pieces of this and that in place. The captain was a bit of a knot geek so we had a bit of a nice side conversation about that. So it seems that the traditional at least somewhat continues, not so sure about the navy folks anymore though, they're probably pretty busy with other stuff :)

Technically the metal fid is a marlinspike, basically the difference is that fids are wood or bone and marlinespikes (marline is/was a type of tarred twine). I'm sure there is some historical reasoning for the difference but not sure what it is.

Had a good rope knot app on my phone until recently. Gosh now cannot find it.

Try animatedknots.com? I've never used thier app but they have one and generally pretty accurate explanations on the website.
 
like you said a handy tool if one is into knots and splicing lines. I say that because if you were truly an old salty sailor you would know that there is only one rope on a ship all the rest are called lines or sheets. Now can anyone tell me where the rope is?
 
like you said a handy tool if one is into knots and splicing lines. I say that because if you were truly an old salty sailor you would know that there is only one rope on a ship all the rest are called lines or sheets. Now can anyone tell me where the rope is?

Hmm.. well there is the the bell rope, the foot rope (for standing on under the yards), the hand rope in the galley, the yard and mast ropes (for hauling up and down the mast/yards), and of course all of the rope that has not yet been made up into lines... Of course lines are sheets (I guess some call them "sheet lines" ) when they're attached to a sail. I'm pretty sure I'm missing some here.

I only know this much because of http://www.amazon.com/The-Young-Officers-Sheet-Anchor/dp/0486402207 (although I have the leevalley reprint its now sadly back out of print - I admit to being slightly addicted to the leevalley old book reprints, they are very nice :D).

As a lubber its all rope to me though :rofl:

Nope leevalley still has it - I just failed at searching: http://www.leevalley.com/US/Wood/page.aspx?p=40983&cat=1,46096,46100&ap=2
 
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Hmm.. well there is the the bell rope, the foot rope (for standing on under the yards), the hand rope in the galley, the yard and mast ropes (for hauling up and down the mast/yards), and of course all of the rope that has not yet been made up into lines... Of course lines are sheets (I guess some call them "sheet lines" ) when they're attached to a sail. I'm pretty sure I'm missing some here.

I only know this much because of http://www.amazon.com/The-Young-Officers-Sheet-Anchor/dp/0486402207 (although I have the leevalley reprint its now sadly back out of print - I admit to being slightly addicted to the leevalley old book reprints, they are very nice :D).

As a lubber its all rope to me though :rofl:

Nope leevalley still has it - I just failed at searching: http://www.leevalley.com/US/Wood/page.aspx?p=40983&cat=1,46096,46100&ap=2

well going back nearly 50 years ago while in boot camp in San Diego during our basic seamanship course we were taught that the only rope was the ships bell rope and ecerything else was either a line or a sheet. Now the next nautical trivial questions is whose duty was it to polish the ships bell.
 
well going back nearly 50 years ago while in boot camp in San Diego during our basic seamanship course we were taught that the only rope was the ships bell rope and ecerything else was either a line or a sheet.

Likely true on modern ships - I think all of the other ones I listed are archaic - although I believe that rope not yet made into lines is still rope but I'd guess that there isn't a lot of that on most ships nowadays either.

Now the next nautical trivial questions is whose duty was it to polish the ships bell.

Huh, don't know that one - it seems that it would be sort of a point of honor no?
 
Even though I was a Marine for 26 years, I know it was originally the duty of the ship's cook. Though I can't remember who the poor soul was that had to test taste the roast beef for the officer's after it was piped in.
 
I have only used them with hollow braided line/rope. I do use them a lot and have never had a rope come loose.
This is the same way I do it.... well I spit on my finger tips to keep from burning them on the hot line.
I do see they are used with different style rope also.

 
Thanks, Mike. That was cool. Can you buy fids or do you have to make them?

You can buy the ones like shown in the video, any decent hardware store should sell them in the rope section. They are only a couple of bucks.

I used mine a few weeks back to make a tie down for the little cart I use to pick up limbs. Instead of pulling just the fid out keep the rope inside and you can skip a section and go back in again. I came out for about an inch (which is plenty for a loop) then back in. I have four exposed loops about a foot apart to hook a rubber tie down strap to depending on the length needed for the load. The fid is pulled out of the rope after the last loop leaving the end inside.

I know nothing about this seller but at $4.30 it would cost me that much to go to the store.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Wellington-...865e4be&pid=100005&rk=1&rkt=6&sd=381276389817
 
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Carol,

I'm going to ask what sort of work you're interested in doing as that affects the type of tooling you'll want.


For the hollow rope splicing like Mike was doing those are indeed the correct fids (really more like large needles in some ways) and the ones I made would work exceedingly poorly for that purpose. Its not worth making this type either as the plastic ones work really quite well and they'd actually be harder to make in general.

On the other hand for more traditional rope splicing (interweaved splicing) or knot work I'm not a fan of that type for two reasons; first they are uncomfortable in the hand (you push the fid between strands to open them up and having a rounded comfortable back is nice) and secondly the point is to abrupt which makes it hard to use to separate strands in the rope (but does make it work well for its intended purpose as it doesn't tend to duck between strands).
 
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