How is that couriers call as soon as you go out even if you haven’t left the house for days? This morning, I’d decided to accompany my friend, Adam Anarchy, on a motorbike ride to the Porsche dealers in Chiswick for a test drive. Might as well take advantage of the last few sunny biking days before it gets Siberian here. Of course, almost as soon as we arrived, the courier phoned to say he was at my house with a pallet of rope. Typical!
Anyway, I hared back home as he said he’d return after another drop off. I now have 100 more reels of 6mm Tossa Lite and 30 of the new 7mm. I was surprised that the 7mm looked so much thicker than the 6mm but a quick check with my digital vernier callipers showed the 6mm to be spot on and the 7mm 0.15mm over specification. I will be interested to see how they measure up with my soft materials gauge when it shows up. Hopefully, this will allow very consistent measurements to be taken which I shall publish along with the product description.
Both the 6mm and 7mm are incredibly light and flexible. As you’d expect with a loose laid rope like this, it is likely to settle in as a slightly smaller diameter after some use, so my advice would be to go one 1mm up on your usual diameter. I don’t think washing improves it and, if anything reduces the life-span, but, if you do, don’t boil it for long or do anything that might cause the plies to open up, e.g. washing machine or conditioner. If I wet treat it, I twist it to tighten it when I hang it out. It’s so soft that all you need to do is to oil and burn off, then you are ready to go.