A customer recently contacted us about a dinghy lift bridle that he had made that had failed in during its first use. Luckily no one was hurt, but the boat was a write off. The bridle was constructed of 7×7 wire rope oval sleeves to attach the wire to the center lift point. The bridle failed when the wire pulled out of all three of the oval sleeves.

Oval sleeves are a very common method of terminating wire, especially the more flexible types such as 7×7 and 7×19. Correctly installed oval sleeves will hold up to 90% of the rated strength of the wire. Here are 8 tips for making sure that your Oval Sleeve installation is done correctly:

1.      Make sure you are using the correctly sized tool. There are many different tools available for compressing oval sleeves, some have only one swaging cavity while others have several…