Can you send me some pictures of this, also what knots are you using on what lines? I would like to test some different knots on some scrap pieces of rope we have lying around to see what happens to them. Our Superline XD has a knot on the thimble end, because of the braided cover we cannot splice this rope.
-Alex
Unfortunately there were no pictures taken. I was working with Amsteel in the 1/4" size as I wanted to test the knots without getting into huge loads to break the line if that was going to happen.
My test set-up was a Warn 8742 on the front of a SBC powered, D60/14bff'd FJ40 and the anchor was a SRW Crewcab 1 ton service bed Chevy truck in park with the p-brake on and a chock behind the RR tire. Since we were testing knots any failure was a failure and knowing the tension at failure was deemed not necessary. Besides I had no access to such a tool.
Basically every knot that I tried failed the line. No knot worked. I used every common climber's knot used for joining ropes known to me (Figure 8 variations, Grapevine, 'Water" knot, etc.). I did not do any research of knots unknown to me as the likelihood of my remembering them sometime in the future isn't great.
What did work, and work surprisingly well, was a simple 'S' weave where the end completely pierced the line's weave every time it crossed it. As I recall it required a minimum of 4 crosses for the last cross to not show pull-out strain. We were still able to fail the line, but it did not fail in the simple splice, but rather in random locations.