Make your own rope

Making your own rope is very satisfying. I’ve run the ropewalk as a public activity at a couple of maritime festivals where I do demonstrations. On both occasions I missed a trick; if I’d put a festival donations bucket out, or charged a small fee for making rope items we would have made a tidy sum for festival funds.

Children and parents alike were queuing up to make skipping ropes, dog leads, dressing gown belts or just lengths to take away and work with. As well as natural twine I’d sourced skeins of coloured jute and allowed people to mix and match, sometimes putting more than one colour within each strand which can make tartan rope if you mix it right.

The ropewalk itself – or ‘rope maker’ is also a great project. It’s practical, fun and educational and would be a great project to teach in schools.

So how does a ropewalk work?

If you have ever wound up a rubber band-powered model aeroplane you might have seen that as you twist the rubber band to the right it, obviously, twists in that direction. Then a strange thing happens; once the initial twist is taken up, it then kinks like an old-style curly telephone cable but in the opposite direction. You are winding Right but this secondary curliness is curling Left, around itself. If you had separately twisted three such rubber bands alongside one another they would now be winding around each other and looking a bit like, well, three-strand rope.

The principle of the ropewalk is the same. The one illustrated here is very short; I have made ropes of around 40ft long with this setup. Any longer and the weight would probably pull the pillars over, though I have seen rope in-the-making supported mid-way on little stands. Ropes of up to half an inch (12mm) can be made on a light setup like this. Between the ends you can see a large roll of jute twine for the yarns.

Jute makes fairly strong, soft rope. Similar rolls of manilla can also be sourced. This twine will act as the yarns (see diagram, top right) and is typically about 1mm to 2mm thick. Sisal can also be used but this often comes in thicker twine and makes for rather lumpy rope. Wool is good and bright colours are a lot