A quick thought on the whole "marine" thang...

On pervasive market values, musing on a messy business, and Lefsetz with a great post on Jesse Winchester (who, sadly, just passed away)...

The other day I mentioned that I was having issues splicing a rope made by Samson called Tenex and, like a lot of posts, it got some people writing. Some to ask me about the rope, others to advise me how to deal with the splice, and several to tell me I was an idiot because Tenex is not a "MARINE" product.

So, to answer some questions...

There are two sorts of Tenex. Tenex Tec which I have been using for a couple of years and Tenex which is new to me and is a bit different hence the issues splicing the other day as it behaves quite differently than the Tenex Tec.

Both ropes seem to be aimed at the arborist and commercial rigging markets. I also see a lot of Tenex/Tenex Tec being sold in venues who deal with commercial fisheries.

I was attracted to it because it's a polyester, doesn't stretch much at all, has excellent UV resistance, tough, is comfortable in the hand, and is cheap in comparison to other ropes with the same strength/characteristics. Point of fact, I first started using it as a tail material for high tech halyards using small diameter Amsteel (Dyneema) but then discovered the Tenex Tec had a lot of properties that made it extremely useful for a lot of stuff on the boat...

And, I did mention it was cheap, didn't I?

What you need to keep in mind when deciding what products to use on your boat is not whether it's a marine/non-marine thing but will the product or products do the job. If you take a look at the specs of either of the Tenex ropes you'll see that it is actually a very impressive line. My advice is to always figure out what your needs are first and then find a rope that's a good match.

Oh yeah. as far as the problematic nature of splicing the Tenex... It was not a problem at all once I realized I was simply using the wrong splice. The Tenex Tec works great with a Brummel splice but the Tenex not so much in the way I like to work. The easy answer was to simply look at the Samson site and see which splice they recommended.

Listening to Jesse Winchester

So it goes...