Q: Do I need to do lock stitching on a brummel splice?
A: No. It should not be essential if you have a proper long bury.
Q: Do I need to use lock stitching to make up a chicken loop?
A: I would & do.
This
http://www.animatedknots.com/ provides a nice collated resource for knots, splices and the like – may be worth a look?
My understanding is that with a text book brummel splice, it is the long bury that gives the strength and the brummel splice mainly just prevents the long bury creeping out of an unloaded line.
However a long bury should be around 72 times the line diameter (for dyneema), so if we are using 4 or 5mm line, the bury should be 288 – 360mm.
This is not going to be practical for a normal Chicken loop.
So whatever is done its not going to be ‘text book correct’ splice (which aims to maintain the full breaking strength of the line). In my experience, this is also the case for virtually all commercially made kite and bar parts. Fortunately the materials we use are several times the working loads so it doesn’t matter if the line terminations aren’t as strong as the raw line.
Personally, I’m with edt on this one. ie Just bury and sew. Mainly because it’s much easier to adjust the length to exactly as you want it, prior to lock stitching.
Also, it’s worth considering how many brummel spices have you seen on commercially made kite and bar parts? – I can only remember seeing the bury and stitch method.
A tip for making a chicken loop is make up your dyneema line first. Load it to stretch/settle the length. Then trim your PU tube to size (I tend to cut the PU tube slightly oversize so it is under a fair bit of compression when assembled with the line).