Just about every piece of running rigging has a shackle (or a loop) spliced into it.

So. I've been trying to learn to splice loops into double-braided line.

See Home Handicrafts — Splicing for my first few attempts.

Here's the mizzen outhaul: white with green.

I spliced a loop without the block.

Ugh.

So. I flipped the line around and spliced the loop WITH the block. Much nicer to have the block.

Then I could chop the useless loop off and whip the end.

I'm finally getting good enough that I can do more than one each day.

For practice I put an eye on the Cunningham hook. I think it worked out well.

(We never had sails that needed Cunningham before. We had the hook, though, which was nice.)

This eye should look good. It took me hours to get it to go together.

But. It was a real confidence builder because it did work out much better than my earlier practice attempts on dirty old line.

New line is much more fun to work with than old line.

The running backstays worked out pretty well. One of them got a lump in the core that I could not work out.

After doing several more loops, I now think I might have been able smooth out the core and get it into the cover. But. I didn't try all the right things then.

Instead. I wound it with seizing to cover up the bulge of exposed core. In 5 years, when I reverse the lines, I'll put new eyes at the other ends, chop off these eyes and do a better job.

This is a tricky process, but the secret seems to be using exactly one layer of tape to hold the core or cover onto the fid. And PULL THE TAPE HARD to stretch it so it shrinks around the line. TIGHTLY.

Here's the most complicated-looking step.

The blue cover goes into some of the white core. The white core has been rethreaded partially through the empty blue cover, There's a loop hanging down that needs to be pulled through.

This time, I managed to include the cheek block for the reefing line. I've forgotten to thread on the fittings more than once and have to carefully unthread and rethread.

The bunched up white core needs to be smoothed out so that it will fit back unto the cover. Apparently, one trick is to pull hard to stretch it so it thins out a bit.

After a bit more fooling and fiddling, it eventually comes together to make a nice loop that includes the cheek block for the reefing line.

Here's the old cheek block, BTW.

These had to go. They're starting to look like a safety hazard.

The topping lifts, similarly, see a lot of weather. They both had single blocks with beckets that could not be removed.

The top picture (the mizzen outhaul) is a single block with becket that's so small a removable becket would be more trouble than it's worth. It's ¼″ line. There's not a lot of clearance between end of sail and end of boom. I'm willing to put up with it there.