Post #801032 by hang10tiki on Fri, Feb 28, 2020 9:02 PM

Aloha Wendy

A deadeye is an item used in the standing and running rigging of traditional sailing ships. It is a smallish round thick wooden disc with one or more holes through it, perpendicular to the plane of the disc. Single and triple-hole deadeyes are most commonly seen. The three-holed blocks were called deadeyes because the position of the three holes resemble the eye and nose sockets of a sheep's skull.
A single deadeye (or bull's eye) used to change the direction of a line.
Single deadeyes (or bull's eyes) are used to guide and control a line and, particularly in older vessels, to change its direction. More modern systems would use a block for this purpose but in traditional rigs with many lines to deal with, designed when blocks were relatively expensive to make, a deadeye provided an acceptable compromise. When blocks came into common use for adjusting running rigging, deadeyes continued to be used for tensioning standing rigging.

PS- had one of my best fines ever today, I will clean it up and post it tomorrow