Aww, bad luck. They are a sure fire way of ruining a good trip.
We just use procedures from the manufacturer as these tend to be certified methodologies and form part of a "construction manual", which they use for insurance, ISO900x stuff.
The load test specifications also come from the manufacturer. We tend to go one further and offer the dock-side inspectors tea/coffee (our greatest skill and asset) and take a look at the certs for their load cells too. I’d rather loose the hour alongside.
I’ve seen procedures vary from company to company even for something as small as a tiger. some go for bend-back (ours was bend back every 10th strand for the last 20mm), I’ve heard of people just braiding groups of three to bulk up the tapered end and others saying bend back a lot larger lengths of the outer armour.
I think, looking at the procedure, the combination of wirelock and bend-back is probably just to ensure that a single-point failure (wirelock fails or gradual fracture of armour strands over 12-18 months – typically reccomended to do one every 12-18 months). Just added protection for the manufacturer -it’s an insurance thing at the end of the day.
