Confessions of a novice fancy worker

[Seaworthy Lass]

I have made another couple of Bellpull keyfobs, partly as I went overboard and cut WAY too much cord so I had enough left over for two more , and partly because I wanted to nail that Footrope knot. It is a little beauty! This is a super useful way to bury 4 (or maybe even 5 or 6) tails and I will use it to finish off the sliding weave on my next lanyard.

The trick with the Footrope is to keep the weave fairly firm right from the start, otherwise the weave looks a bit of a mess at first, making is much harder to follow.

I made the end loop smaller for each version. I think the middle one sits best, as it is a Goldilocks size - not too big and not too small . In the smallest, the twisted weave in the loop does not sit as well.

I will pop the middle one on my key. Life is so uncomplicated at the moment that I only have the one .

[Seaworthy Lass]

Originally Posted by Seaworthy Lass

...... I wanted to nail that Footrope knot. It is a little beauty! This is a super useful way to bury 4 (or maybe even 5 or 6) tails and I will use it to finish off the sliding weave on my next lanyard.

I couldn't wait until tomorrow to try the Footrope on the ends of a sliding weave tied on a backbone of dyneema . I think that basic design of adding a sliding weave on dyneema is just ideal for what I need in a lanyard.

On my walk today I found some plain grey 2mm double braid polyster that was soft enough to use with the core removed. I think this couples beautifully with navy for a knife lanyard, so I was keen to try the Footrope out on this.

I am very happy with the final result .

SEAWORTHY LANYARD (sliding weave on a dyneema backbone)

Material:
1.8m navy 2mm double braid polyester with the core removed
1.8m grey 2mm double braid polyester with the core removed
1m grey 3mm dyneema for the backbone
A little navy thread to sew the tails for the Footrope together
10cm whipping twine to tie a constrictor knot
(No "puller cord" needed for this pattern)

Instructions:
(See previous posts for instructions for the Footrope knot, Multiple Crown knot braid, Diamond knot, Brion's Button)
- Double up the 2 polyester cords, secure them with a temporary constrictor knot so you have 4 working strands and tie a Footrope knot. Before tightening it all up, feed the dyneema through, doubled over so a loop is left on one side and two strands emerge through the Footrope to act as the backbone.
- Undo the constrictor and tighten up the Footrope
- Tie 16 rounds of Crown knots around the backbone (tightly)
- Tie a Footrope knot around the backbone at the top of the weave.
- Sew two lots of tails together near the Footrope, cut the tails to within about 6mm and stuff them in the top of the Footrope
- That is the end of the central weave.
- About 250mm from the end of the loop of dyneema loosely tie a Diamond.
- Above that tie Brion's Button and tighten this well.
- Poke the tails of the Button through the centre of the Diamond to bury them.
- Tighten up the Diamond hard against the Button
- Pull hard on the tails of the Button where they emerge from the base of the Diamond and trim them closely. This will secure them well.

That's it. If you want to skip the Button at then end, the Diamond can just be tightened well and the tails snipped about 10mm from the Diamond, as you would for a soft shackle using a Diamond knot.

Although the central weave is tight, with a bit of pressure it will slide up and down the dyneema backbone, so can be shifted to the base of the cow hitch when you secure the lanyard to the object.

SWL

[UNCIVILIZED]

A question, & not to diminish your work at all, as it's great. But for me, the purpose of a knife lanyard (& other, similar ones) has always been to prevent it's loss, by keeping it attached to me. Especially as on a boat, quite often you're doing anything but standing/remaining vertical, so things are prone to falling out of your pockets. Or even getting accidentally torn or pushed out of them.

Thus my lanyards have always been built with this purpose in mind, including having an easy opening clip on the lanyard, to aid in securing the end of the lanyard to something substantial that I'm wearing. Such as my belt, or a stout ring sewn into a pocket in my foulies.
Thoughts? And perhaps you could explain the purpose of these "abridged" (from my perspective) lanyards that you've posted.

I'll occasionally use a wrist loop (lanyard'ish) on a fixed blade knife when chopping with it (which I'm loath to do). To prevent it from striking me, should it loose itself from my grip. Or on my sailing knife when aloft, to avoid dropping it, but that's about it. Otherwise the lanyard is a 2ndary means of keeping the knife attached to me.

[Seaworthy Lass]

Originally Posted by UNCIVILIZED

A question, & not to diminish your work at all, as it's great. But for me, the purpose of a knife lanyard (& other, similar ones) has always been to prevent it's loss, by keeping it attached to me. Especially as on a boat, quite often you're doing anything but standing/remaining vertical, so things are prone to falling out of your pockets. Or even getting accidentally torn or pushed out of them.

Thus my lanyards have always been built with this purpose in mind, including having an easy opening clip on the lanyard, to aid in securing the end of the lanyard to something substantial that I'm wearing. Such as my belt, or a stout ring sewn into a pocket in my foulies.
Thoughts? And perhaps you could explain the purpose of these "abridged" (from my perspective) lanyards that you've posted.

I'll occasionally use a wrist loop (lanyard'ish) on a fixed blade knife when chopping with it (which I'm loath to do). To prevent it from striking me, should it loose itself from my grip. Or on my sailing knife when aloft, to avoid dropping it, but that's about it. Otherwise the lanyard is a 2ndary means of keeping the knife attached to me.

My knife generally lives in a pocket, and sailing jacket pockets are secure. I rarely clip a knife to myself, except when going aloft and then it is usually attached to my harness or bosun's chair on a long cord, so there is zero risk of dropping it in use.

I don't want a shackle of any kind permanently attached, but one could easily be added whenever needed. I occasionally use a soft shackle to attach lanyards, as I don't want extra weight or extra metal jangling.

For me, the prime purpose of a lanyard is to loop the object (knife, camera, torch) around my wrist when using it, so that if it slips out of my hands it is not lost overboard or damaged. So apart from that very first one that was made using Brion's instructions, all mine have therefore been made with a long loop to go over my wrist.

If anyone always clips their knife on, a snap shackle could easily be added during the construction. I would make the loop without a stopper at the end then. I find the stopper good, as if the lanyard is being gripped without being looped over my wrist, it can't slide out of my grip easily.

That is the beauty of custom work . It can so easily be modified to suit the individual's needs.

SWL

[Seaworthy Lass]

Turk's Head

I have decided this weave is a "rite of passage" when it comes to knot work .
I can do small ones on my hand, so I had no idea I would struggle so much with a bigger weave (some of this was self induced, as I was trying to work out a general principle).

Uncivilized, this was made following your suggestion of using a "loose" Turk's head for my central weave on the dyneema backbone I am smitten with (although I still couldn't bring myself to permanently attach a snap shackle to one end, as you would have done ). It is a two bight, 21 lead, multicolour, triple Turk's Head and it was my first attempt at anything on a mandrel (nothing fancy, just a cardboard insert from a roll of paper towel).

I think the following is correct:
The number of bights is the number of bends going around the circumference at the ends.
The number leads is the number of lines you can count going straight up and down the weave at any point (they alternately change direction as they zig zag up and down the weave).

This should have been easy, but it was a four hour effort, with several unravellings. I was trying to fathom out the basics of working with a single strand, which slowed it all down tremendously. The first complete pass (before you simply follow the pattern around as many times as you like) should literally take few minutes, not ages to get right. The rest of the passes are dead easy as they just follow this. The tightening is just fairly mindless, but time consuming.

This is the video I followed (except I increased the number of initial turns):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGNodpJTdxE&sns=em

The turnings in the first round still have me stumped. The instructions in the above video said to do 3 full turns around the mandrel initially. I paused the video countless time, but it seemed he was doing 3.5 turns . Also, he said the number of initial turns must be odd. I can't see why . All I can see is that you can't use a whole number of turns. Fractions of any number of full turns seem to all seem be fine.

What I initially decided, is that for single strand weaves (that you can then go around as many times as you like) if you have an even number of bights, the number of leads always ends up odd. It seems to follow that if you have an odd number of bights the number of leads will be even. When I look at Wikipedia though, it discuss weaves with odd number of both bights and leads. It is important I can grasp this, as otherwise I will forever have the agony of sitting through long videos rather than weaving with ease . Can anyone help here?

After all my efforts last night, all I think I have done is nailed the two bight version using one strand (that can then be wound around multipe times, including with different colours).

I will add some tips and intermediate photos if anyone is interested.

Materials & equipment used:
- 1m x 3mm single braid dyneema
- 4m x 2mm grey double braid polyester with the core removed
- 2m x 2mm navy double braid polyester with the core removed
- Cardboard for a mandrel
- Tape
- Pins
- 2 knitting needles (use one as an awl and the other as a stiff insert for the final tightening)
Scissors
- Pliers for tightening the stopper knots in the dyneema at the end
- 2 lengths of whipping twine doubled over to use as "pulling cord" for the tails of the weave

The exact amount needed for the weave depends on the cord diameter, the final diameter of Turk's Head needed, the diameter of the mandrel you are tying it on, and how much you spread out your weave on the mandrel. Some will be left over after the final tightening. This is all way to complex to quantify easily. I suggest just cutting lots more cord than you think it needs and then use the excess for other pieces of work.

How I think the weave I made below could be improved:
2 times and around in navy split by one in grey would have looked better than the other way around, but I have very little 2mm navy and can't find where to source it in the EU, so I am using it sparingly
It needs to be shorter (I did 5.5 initial turns, not 3.5, as in the video, thinking it would end up too short otherwise)
It would look better with the ends finished with two narrow navy Turk's Heads running the other way. I will see if I feel like doing this later.

The Turk's Head fits reasonably tightly on the dyneema, but can still be slid up and down to any position:
SWL

[Seaworthy Lass]

Main tip before starting:

Roll up your cardboard to make a mandrel only just a bit bigger than the final one you want. Making it too big means you need masses more line to weave it (which is a waste of line and the long length slows you down) and masses more time to then tighten up all the slack line.

The mandrel size I finally used was only about 1cm in diameter, but even this was too big. This is an iPad snapshot of the rat's nest that resulted last night during tightening.

No one shows you images like this . They all just say "let me pause the video and I will tighten it all up" then hey presto, it all looks perfect.

[Seaworthy Lass]

I was curious to see how long Turk's Heads have been woven. Certainly a couple of thousand years at least, as images can be found in Roman mosaics. I wonder if they called them Anatolian's Heads?

This is a 7 bight, 3 lead, which throws my initial theory of odd and even out of the window . I need to find a decent reference and do a bit of reading if I am to get a better grasp of these.

This is a Google image. I should have looked more closely at the Roman floors I came across in Italy and Tunisia and Greece:

[StuM]

Originally Posted by Seaworthy Lass

I was curious to see how long Turk's Heads have been woven. Certainly a couple of thousand years at least, as images can be found in Roman mosaics. I wonder if they called them Anatolian's Heads?

This is a 7 bight, 3 lead, which throws my initial theory of odd and even out of the window . I need to find a decent reference and do a bit of reading if I am to get a better grasp of these.
:

Ashley devoted an entire chapter (Chap 17) to it. Referring to single line Turks Heads he says:

"There is but one actual limitation to the size and proportions of SINGLE-LINE TURK'S HEADS: A knot of one line is impossible in which the number of leads and the number of bights have a common divisor. All others are possible if the knot tier has sufficient time and cord at his disposal"

[Seaworthy Lass]

Originally Posted by StuM

Ashley devoted an entire chapter (Chap 17) to it. Referring to single line Turks Heads he says:

"There is but one actual limitation to the size and proportions of SINGLE-LINE TURK'S HEADS: A knot of one line is impossible in which the number of leads and the number of bights have a common divisor. All others are possible if the knot tier has sufficient time and cord at his disposal"

Ah, that makes better sense. It means that the number of leads and bights can't both be even. I could see this, to I thought they all needed to be an even and odd mix, which clearly isn't the case. Thanks for finding that.

I didn't make anything yesterday, but this morning's project was just a practice run to make sure I was comfortable with the 2 bight version of a Turk's head before I went any further. I made this on a mandrel that was only a touch bigger than the final result I wanted and shortened it to 13 leads. This was a breeze and took less than an hour, most of the time still being taken in tightening up the weave.

Instead of tucking in the ends, I finished it off with a 4 strand Star knot (that doesn't look like a star if only 4 strands are used ).

I again finished the dyneema with a Diamond knot and Brion's Button, as the tails of the Button can be buried easily and securely out of sight in the Diamond. It is hard to find knots that work so well in dyneema. Any other suggestions here?

I prefer the navy and grey combination I used in the last two lanyards, but I have little 2mm plain navy double braid polyester left and surprisingly can't source any online in the EU. Anyone know where this can be purchased? The cover of mine looks a tighter weave than the other double braid I have (it is a beautiful cord) and there is a chance the core of this was not polyester.

The lanyard used:
1m x 3mm dyneema for the "backbone"
2m x 2mm pink double braid polyester with the core removed (Liros cord)
1m x 2mm grey double braid polyester with the core removed (Bora cord)

This is the final result. Given I am not fond of pink braid, it actually turned out better than expected. I am very happy with the use of a sliding weave on a dyneema backbone. It functions very well, feels good and should wear well.

[belizesailor]

A little something for the new house. Still need to snug it up a bit.

[Seaworthy Lass]

Originally Posted by belizesailor

A little something for the new house. Still need to snug it up a bit.

Attachment 152700

That looks beautiful! Is it an Ocean Plat (ABOK #2243)? Did you start it with an overhand knot as Ashley suggests? How large has it ended up? How do you conceal the ends?

I have always admired rope mats and was thinking of making one for the new boat. Synthetic hemp rope used here on old Dutch boats look like the real thing at first glance, and I think this would work well for mats like this.

SWL

[UNCIVILIZED]

SWL, for cordage, have you tried finding vendors online where you can source it? Even if through say, Amazon. And in the US at least, virtually any sporting goods, or outdoor store carrys a plethora of color patterns & sources. They're where I go when not buying Perlon by the spool.
A couple of other ideas are, chandleries of course, even if they have to order it for you. And arborist's suppliers, as they perhaps do more rope work than sailors. Given where they work.

belizesailor, nice work. Though making one of those surely takes more concentration than I can muster at the moment. And those mats are always so pretty that I'd be afraid to use'em as mats.

[Seaworthy Lass]

Originally Posted by UNCIVILIZED

SWL, for cordage, have you tried finding vendors online where you can source it? Even if through say, Amazon. And in the US at least, virtually any sporting goods, or outdoor store carrys a plethora of color patterns & sources. They're where I go when not buying Perlon by the spool.

There are no outdoor stores closeby here (I am in a fairly rural area), but I have ordered some paracord in black, grey and red from Amazon in the UK. They have no plain 2mm double braid polyester in navy, nor can I find this online anywhere. I have looked through the pdf files of catalogues from several European rope manufacturers such as Marlow, Gleistein, New England Braid, Liros etc. I am at a loss where else to search.

SWL

[UNCIVILIZED]

Originally Posted by Seaworthy Lass

There are no outdoor stores closeby here (I am in a fairly rural area), but I have ordered some paracord in black, grey and red from Amazon in the UK. They have no plain 2mm double braid polyester in navy, nor can I find this online anywhere. I have looked through the pdf files of catalogues from several European rope manufacturers such as Marlow, Gleistein, New England Braid, Liros etc. I am at a loss where else to search.

SWL

Most of the mentioned cordage makers do make a variety of line akin to what you're looking for. I see it regularly over here, as well as at some of the US online yacht chandleries like APSltd.com & Velasailingsupply.com
Actually both of those chandleries may have the part numbers of most of what they stock. So that if you see some line made by a European cordage manufactuer on those websites, it might aid your search.
The dinghy cordage section is the place to start on their websites, & at Velasailingsupply you can search by manufacturer also.

It would be worth it too, to pick up a slew of sailing magazines, especially ones with a fair slant towards racers & high end boats, as thy always have ads by cordage manufacturers & riggers in them. Seahorse is one, also Yacht World, Yachting, Yachting Monthly

And I'm not sure where you're located, but Dockhead's UK based, & knows a fair number of "rope pushers" as he calls them. Cordage suppliers in lay speak. So drop him a note & ask. And tell us where you're at, & we can provide suggestions, or perhaps even semi-local POC's.

That, plus, Fed-Ex goes everywhere, & any more, the bigger cnandleries are quite used to shipping internationally, & or, to obscure locations. So it's worth asking them about this.

Another good stockist is MauriProSailing.com & I'd imagine that any good rigging shop or spar builder has loads of contacts all over the place. As would any shops which stock climbing, alpine mountaineering, or camping gear (like REI). Which some of them too pretty commonly ship gear to spots few have ever heard of.
Ditto companies like Harken, who supply sailors globally, & who's products run on line (or vice versa). Ronstan's another, etc.


EDIT: Here are the links to getting international orders from some of the companies mentioned.
International Orders | APS
https://www.velasailingsupply.com/worldwide-shipping/
https://www.rei.com/help/placing-int...al-orders.html
And it looks like Mauri Pro Sailing has free international shipping for orders over $99

[Seaworthy Lass]

Originally Posted by UNCIVILIZED

Most of the mentioned cordage makers do make a variety of line akin to what you're looking for. I see it regularly over here, as well as at some of the US online yacht chandleries like APSltd.com & Velasailingsupply.com
Actually both of those chandleries may have the part numbers of most of what they stock. So that if you see some line made by a European cordage manufactuer on those websites, it might aid your search.
The dinghy cordage section is the place to start on their websites, & at Velasailingsupply you can search by manufacturer also.

It would be worth it too, to pick up a slew of sailing magazines, especially ones with a fair slant towards racers & high end boats, as thy always have ads by cordage manufacturers & riggers in them. Seahorse is one, also Yacht World, Yachting, Yachting Monthly

And I'm not sure where you're located, but Dockhead's UK based, & knows a fair number of "rope pushers" as he calls them. Cordage suppliers in lay speak. So drop him a note & ask. And tell us where you're at, & we can provide suggestions, or perhaps even semi-local POC's.

That, plus, Fed-Ex goes everywhere, & any more, the bigger cnandleries are quite used to shipping internationally, & or, to obscure locations. So it's worth asking them about this.

Another good stockist is MauriProSailing.com & I'd imagine that any good rigging shop or spar builder has loads of contacts all over the place. As would any shops which stock climbing, alpine mountaineering, or camping gear. Which some of them too pretty commonly ship gear to spots few have ever heard of.
Ditto companies like Harken, who supply sailors globally, & who's products run on line (or vice versa). Ronstan's another, etc.

Thanks for all the suggestions. In the past I have not needed much thin cordage and while in Greece I occasionally bought a small spool (20m) of multicoloured cord made by Liros that looks a good quality and is nice and soft to handle. The leftover navy I bought several years ago by the metre, but I can't recall where in Greece.

I am temporarily in the Netherlands and can easily take delivery of anything in the EU, so my choices are broad. Goods out of the EU are not simple to purchase, as duty is enforced even on small orders and items can be held up for weeks in customs.

I can find multicoloured (generally speckled) 2mm double braid polyester, but absolutely nothing in plain navy anywhere. I will keep hunting though.

SWL