Pouring a Socket

For our next job we have to deploy a pre-laid anchor first. This morning, we took over 1200 meter three inch anchor wire from the Thialf and spooled it on our anchor handling drum. It had a plain end on one side so we had to make an end termination on it. This is called a spelter socket. The idea is quite clever. You put the plain end through the socket first and make a sort of paintbrush of the end of the steel wire. Then you slide the socket back over this brush and fill the spaces between all the small wires of the brush with resin and hardener. Leave it for two hours and you can pull with 150 tons on it without pulling the brush out of the socket. And that's what we are going to do with it tomorrow, connect a 22 tons anchor to it and dig it deep in the seafloor of the Danish Continental Shelf. Here you can see two riggers of the Thialf cleaning the brush very carefully.