Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Leather globe knot key fobs...

I used a couple of different types of leather lace, dark brown 2mm round and tan 1/8" lace, for these 45 face and 18 face globe knot key fobs tied over 3/4" wood ball cores.

And a long 4 bight turks head knot bracelet, made with the 2mm leather cord over paracord, with a side release buckle.

Monday, October 18, 2010

Long turks head knot lanyard...

This is the single longest knotting project, as far as time invested, that I've worked on so far.

Around 9+ hours, most of which in tying the 109 lead 4 bight turks head knot, with a little over 60 feet of black and tan 1.4mm nylon cord. Well, I was watching TV at the same time, so there was some distraction involved...

I started with a doubled up 50 foot length of the 1.4mm tan, although I don't know if running it like that saved me any time, compared to running two passes with a singled line. It was constantly getting twisted as I worked, and had to be dealt with after crossings and each over/under. Either way, that's a lot of cord to feed through, keep straight, and neat, before adding the 20+ foot length of black 1.4mm cord between the tan...

I tied the long 4 bight turks head around a rifle cleaning rod, which was about 30 inches long, and after tightening, straightening, and working the slack out, got the knot down to about 24 inches long. I then slid it off the cleaning rod and pulled a doubled up 6 foot length of paracord through, with lanyard knot and loop on one end, and finished with a swivel clip/snap hook, and lanyard knot on the other end. A little bit of needle and thread was worked around both ends of the turks head knot, to keep it in place on the lanyard.

 The look/feel of the finished turks head knot/lanyard is rope-like, in a somewhat oval shape, around the two strands of paracord, about 3/8" to 1/2" height/width from front and side angles.

I may use this as a wallet lanyard, but it would work well with a knife, multitool, flashlight, cell phone, or some other gear or gadget... I think it came out fairly nice, but I don't see myself spending that much time on a single project again anytime soon. A longer turks head knot like that, takes a lot of care in keeping it neat while tying.

I did make one error, missing an over on a crossing, but decided to leave it instead of untying for a fix, to remind me to pay more attention in the future...

The 'Encyclopedia of Rawhide and Leather Braiding' by Bruce Grant, has listed in the contents, 'Two-Bight Turk's-head of Any Length'. There's all kinds of knot work shown within the book, with plenty of information pictures and diagrams to learn from. 

Bud Brewer's tutorial, is a good online resource to learn a 2 bight turks head knot, and then increase it to a 4 bight knot. For longer lengths, just take the cord around your mandrel(whatever object you're tying around) as many times as you want, and make all the same crossings and overs/unders, as shown in the tutorial.

Sunday, October 10, 2010

A long 4 bight turks head knot over paracord...

I used about 15 feet of tan 1.4mm braided nylon cord, to tie a long 4 bight turks head knot(45L4B), over a doubled up 3 foot length of coyote tan paracord. The paracord is attached to a swivel clip with a cat's paw knot at one end, and a small split ring secured by snake knots at the other end.

The stainless steel rigging knife has a marlin spike, blade, screwdriver, lanyard loop/bail,and shackle key.

Tying the knot around a drinking straw as a mandrel first, is easier than tying it around the paracord. I doubled up the 1.4mm cord when tying the knot to only make one pass.

The bracelet version is a 61 lead 4 bight turks head knot, using less than 20 feet of 1.4mm tan/gray nylon cord, with paracord for the core and a 3/8" side release buckle. You can just see where I've used the hemostats to pull the paracord ends back through some of the knot work to secure them, and I'll trim and tuck those to finish.

Here's the finished long 4 bight turks head knot bracelet shown next to a regular paracord bracelet. And a couple more that I made with a some different colors I have of the 1.4mm nylon cord, with the knots spaced out a bit to see the paracord underneath, black paracord under the darker tan, and coyote tan under the off white.

Another larger one was made with a 4 strand paracord core and a 5/8" side release buckle. I put two drinking straws side-by-side, with rubber bands on the ends to hold them together, when tying the long 4 bight knot around them, before pulling the paracord through. I was hoping to get the 4 strands to lay flat in a row with the turks head knot over them, but they end up getting bunched up. I was thinking of a possible watchband version, but done with separated turks head knots on both sides of the watch, between the buckle ends, with the paracord running underneath the watch. Maybe tying the knots around nylon webbing, or just over an existing watchband would work better...

Here's a link to a blog post from September 2009, of a 2 bight lanyard tutorial and a 2 bight paracord bracelet that I made last year. The 4 bight knots start off as 2 bight knots. ;)