The best chafe sleeve, and why a cover is NOT a chafe sleeve.

After a little more time spent with the chafe machine, a champion emerges. as well as the observation that weave is as important as the material.

What? Being Spectra is not enough? A it turns out, there is an enormous difference between braided covers and tightly woven tubing. In fact, our lowly nylon tubular webbing typically out-wears Dyneema and Kevlar rope covers. No wonder we have been so happy with our experience using nylon webbing as a chafe cover for docklines.

Top to bottom:

New England Rope ARC. 10 minutes against grindstone.

New England Rope Dyneema Chafe Sleeve. 10 minutes against grindstone.

For reference:

New England Rope Regatta Braid. 1 minute against grindstone.

New England Ropes StaSet (not pictured). About the same as Regatta Braid.

9/6-inch 7x19 rigging wire parted in 13 minutes.

But I hadn't tested nylon webbing in the same run, or plain Amsteel...

Top. ARC, as before.

Center. Plain Amsteel, Dyneema Sleeve, 9/16" nylon tubular webbing, all for 10 minutes.

Lower. Regatta braid, 1 minute, as before.

Notice that the nylon webbing outwore the high-tech cover by a mile (it's still running, at just over 30 minutes, and not through)! Notice that plain Amsteel is 30% through the first yarns, worse than the webbing.

Which is not to take anything away from this Dyneema webbing sleeve that wears like iron. Wow.

Before we question why New England Ropes even make the cover material, realize they serve a different purpose. ARC makes a nice cover, holding in jammers, minimizing core slip, and not stiffening the line. The Spectra sleeve and tubular nylon does none of these things. All it does is wear hard.

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But this was all tested dry. What about the effect of water? We retested the same materials, and ...

I've never really thought too much about nylon chafe when wet, since it didn't apply to my experience; my mooring lines are well-protected, my anchor rode is chain, and my bridle rigged from cleats with good chafe protection (I suspect this is generally less of a problem for cats--we must always use bridles, but they are easier to rig chafe-free).

Wet vs. Dry Chafe
(2 reps each, only a few minutes variation)

Material                                    Wet vs Dry      Time to Chafe Through
Nylon webbing                          Dry                   45 min.
Nylon webbing                          Wet                   14 min.
NER Dyneema chafe sleeve      Dry                    50 min.
NER Dyneema Chafe Sleeve     Wet                   40 min.

I expected a difference, but 3x caught me by surprise. It is more than a simple change in strength, probably beyond simple analysis. I need to see how much difference Maxijacket makes; there are applications like chain-to-rope splices where Dyneema's not an option. I'll also expand this to include ropes and polyester.

The nylon webbing still makes sense many places, where availability in large sizes and price matter. For comparison, the cover on a typical line fails in 1-3 minutes.