I started out at 17 or so, working for Jensen Marine in Costa Mesa, building up masts for Cal and Ranger production sailboats, and making up the standing and running rigging and lifelines. At that shop, we used an electrically driven Kearney roll swager - like the Loos manual machines, but electrically driven very slowly. We dipped the ends of the stainless steel wire in a little cup of Stockholm Tar before slipping the fitting on the wire and swaging it twice. It was a little slow, and sometimes you ended up with a banana, where the fitting would end up bent.
Later I worked at Forespar Rigging, making rigging sets for all the OTHER production sailboat builders in SoCal. We had a ROTARY swager at that shop, that smacked two dies together with a sort of camming action, while you slowly pushed the wire assembly into the dies. The cable would feed out the back of the machine. It made much nicer, more consistent swages much quicker. That's the sort of machine a previous poster described. Ours was about the size of a Honda 600 and weighed about as much as a backhoe.
THEN we got an ANCIENT punch press, and the dies. NO guards. You held the fitting and wire in your bare hands, said your prayers, stepped on the pedal, and it smacked the dies together; rotate the assembly 90 degrees on its axis, repeat. Fast, scary. It could handle ball ends, and also used this genuinely scary beast on a lot of smaller fittings. Get the fitting cocked in the dies, and it would shower you with stainless steel shrapnel. Wear a face shield and gun muffs if you remember to...
Standing rigging used 1 X 19 wire, VERY stiff. The swage fittings were good for about 95% of the breaking strength of that wire. Aircraft control cable is generally 7 X 32, much more flexible, and lower overall strength, a swage on that wire would be worth 100% of BS.
American made wire was noticeably higher quality than what we usually used from the Far East, and twice as expensive in the late 1970's. You will not go wrong with any made or sold by Loos.
Other end fittings I've used are Electrolines and Norsemans, where the wire gets formed and clamped in a specialized expensive and fatigue prone fitting, sort of like a flare fitting for wire. Not a fan. A nearly brand new Swan had these on the standing rigging, and every single one of them failed a dye penetrant check after one season of ocean racing.
Spelter fittings were not much used in yacht work, but you see them in cranes and heavy rigging. Shove the degreased wire end into a socket fitting, "broom" out the wire, and fill the fitting with lead, or later, with metal filled epoxy.
Then there are Nico-Press crimp fittings. I've put on thousands. There are several ways to screw them up, and they don't work on 1 X 19, but they are relatively quick, and the tooling is cheap. They are frankly all your need for aircraft control wires. Always used with a thimble - an eye is the only end fitting you get.
Then there are Liverpool splices. I worked these a few times. Needs a riggers vice, a Swedish fid, and about an hour and a half. Roughly as strong as a Nico-Press.
I would take a serious look at Dyneema or the other high modulus fibers for control AND structural wires (drag/anti-drag or flying). MUCH easier to work with, lighter. The Bug series of gliders and the Bloop use it with apparently good results. Modern yachts use it for STANDING rigging in place of the stiff 1 X 19.
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