Cool- I'm glad we're all seeing this the same way.
In the bottom splice, I did a standard locking brummel. The tail goes through the standing end, the standing end goes through the tail, then bury the tail. No inverting or anything. This is the way the locking brummell
To make the top splice, I passed the tail through the standing part. Then I passed the tip of the tail through the tail itself. This doesn't form a lock, it just leaves you with a half formed eye and a messed up tail (sounds like a lady you hook up with after a few too many drinks). Now normally, I'd pass the eye through this messed up inverted tail. In doing so, the tail would un-invert and end up looking just like the bottom splice again. In the splice here, I passed the standing end through the inverted tail, then buried the tail. In the pic, the eye has been formed, but the tail never got un-inverted.
Jim- there is a couple ways your splice could have ended up this way.
One- you could be doing as I just described here, switching between directions inadvertently.
Two- you could be inverting the eye the wrong way. I invert mine from the top down. This fixes itself when the eye passes through. If you invert from the bottom up, you would end up with a doubly inverted tail. As Paris Hilton would say- that's hot.
Three- you could be skipping the initial inversion, then when you pass the eye through the tail, instead of uninverting, you're inverting.
Four- the final possibility I can see is goblins. When you are not looking, and after you have completed the splice, they come along and reweave the rope in the wrong manner.
Play around with it a bit. I think you'll get it figured out after some trial and error. I hope you'll report back on what you find. I'm interested to know if the prob is being caused by one of the 4 choices I thought of here, or is there something else causing it that I can't see.
Keep the pics flowing- it helps a lot!
love
nick
