Lifeline fittings for my sailboat

In my misguided youth I spent a lot of years sailing and what I did when relplacing lifelines was to use coated stainless wire rope and nicopress eyes with thimbles where needed. You don't need the large handled nicopress tool to crimp the sleaves. There is also a press that looks like a tubing flaring tool that is relatively cheap. I actually stumbled into my old one from the 70s while cleaning the shop the other day. Using the cheap tool takes a bit longer but it isn't like you are replacing the lifelines everyday. I just googled nicompress and saw an ad for the cheap tool at $27. I hope this helps. Maybe I am just old fashion but I wouldn't trust plastic materials exposed to sunlight in the long term.
 
I never trust the life lines on any boat. I mostly single hand my boat and rarely have more than one guest on board. I have some rather strict rules on my boat regarding staying on the boat. First nobody leaves the cabin without wearing a safety harness and hooking on. Nobody leaves the cockpit without a lifevest and again being hooked onto the jack lines. Third if going forward of the mast you have to hook a halyard to your safety harness. I have a dedicated halyard just for this. If you should somehow go over the side the halyard will keep you mostly out of the water where you can climb back onto the boat. There are more than couple of reports where people went over the side with just a safety harness and tether and drowned because they could not get back onto the boat. I always wear a lifevest when on deck even in the harbor/anchorage. Same goes for my dinghy. I always wear a lifevest.

The only fittings that I am reusing are the fittings at the gates. As I stated above the cost of these fitting is over $200. Not in my budget.
 
Well....

You identified the most likely machining options in your first post, let us know which one you choose and how it works out.

As for the budget, I can't help you there.

Cheers,

John
 
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