Ouch, more painful on the way out than the way in. The manila ropes were the worst for splinters, now most of our ropes are flax hemp which is kinder on the hands but doesn't have the same level of grip that the spiky barbed manila has. Love my job.
I didn’t know there was a difference, but I did think yours looked rather cleaner than the ones I worked with. You end up with leather for palms after a while! I swore by those little tweezers you get with Swiss Army knives that seemed to be the only ones that would grasp the little bit of hemp that poked out. I worked the flys for several years before eventually moving on to LX, then stage manager / jack of all trades in an arts centre, sadly without flys. Eventually moved on to other things, and when I went back to my first theatre 10 years later flying had moved largely to counterweight. The largest thing we flew in my time I think was a massive back wall on an opera set that was a bit of a tight fit for the space shall we say. It ended up taking four sets of hemps with three of us on each set of lines, and even at that it was bloody heavy - the fly floor was a bit crowded! I absolutely loved the job, and in provincial theatre you’re never going to want for variety. I was grateful for the video, because I’ve tried explaining the job to my girlfriend, but I don’t think she could get her head round what it looked like.
