It’s pretty clear to me now that this is becoming a circus blog. Not out of any grand desire to write about such things, but as a consequence of what holds my interest at present.

Trapeze bar whipping. Trapeze bar whipping.

To wit, before breakfast this morning I spent a couple minutes whipping the support rope onto the thimbles for my trapeze bar. This is an important part of the construction process, as it keeps the rope from popping off the thimbles when side loaded. Which would be scary.

In doing so I managed to give myself a couple of terrible finger blisters from tightening the whips. Next time I’ll wear gloves. This leads me to an interesting observation: making a trapeze bar is a time-consuming and obnoxious process.

Why stop now? I’m almost done.

Next up we load test the thimble splices and whips. This involves pulling very hard sideways on the ropes, and checking for loosening/damage/etc. After that, we let the ropes settle by weighting the bar with a couple of heavy sand bags over night. Then the top thimble splices. Finally there’s the padding and the leather cover.

Did I mention this is time consuming?