Most people that can splice struggle doing a hard eye splice nice a tight, I have no trouble and don't need twine an tape to start the splice
Yeah have done 12 strand, short splice for that is easy, the long splice takes a bit more thinking and braid, though not had much practice with the latter.
I was also a gun at sewing/mending nets and even made a set of 4 x 10 fathom prawn nets at sea from scratch. LOL put that skill to use more recently making a chicken run with prawn netting
