Friday, July 12, 2013

Paracord and a horseshoe nail cross pendant...


This horseshoe nail cross pendant has gutted paracord tied in two-strand wall knots around it, with a navy blue paracord neck cord and safety break-away buckle.

To start, I made the horseshoe nail pendant first, bending the nails with pliers and using the nail holes on a small anvil to help get better leverage with the bending.

A bit of krazy/super glue was used to hold the cross together before I tied an 'X' lashing around the center of the cross with 0.9mm black cord.  Not quite a square or diagonal lashing, but started with a constrictor knot, several wraps at one angle then the other for the 'X' around the center of the cross, and finishing with another constrictor knot.

Then I used two separate strands of gutted paracord, about 1.5 feet for the top and 2 feet for the bottom, tying two-strand wall knots around the nails.  After a couple of knots on the top section of the cross, I tied four more on the bottom section, then used strands from both to work the last couple of knots on each arm, trimmed and melting the ends in place with my wood burning tool.

For the neck cord, I used a 32 inch length of paracord, pulling about 1 inch of inner strands from each end, trimmed those, then pulled the outer sheath back over the core strands.  I worked the end of each strand around the safety break-away buckle and sewed the paracord back to itself with needle and polyester thread to secure the ends, instead of using a knot, but you could do whichever you find easier.

This is just another possible variaton of adding knot work to a horseshoe nail cross, and some folks will probably find this much easier to tie than jumping in with a Turk's head knot variation... ;)

And a photo added of the nails shown bent to shape before adding knot work.  I use a couple of different types of small pliers, needle nose and locking to bend the 2" long horseshoe nails, along with a small anvil to help with leverage in bending them.  I don't get technical with measuring, just eyeball it and maybe mark with a Sharpie where I want to bend each one.  You just figure out how tall/wide you want the cross to be according to your preference.

For someone that plans to make a lot of the crosses, a jig for bending, like the one used in this YouTube tutorial would probably come in handy.

 

8 comments:

  1. I really like this pendant, you did a superb job!!

    I am hoping you might have a picture of the horseshoe nails after you bent them, but before they were wrapped. I would like to see how many nails you used and the shape you bent them into before the wrap.

    Thanks,

    Rhynno

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  2. @Troy, I added a photo to the blog post. ;)

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  3. Thanks very much for the photo! It gives me a much better idea of where I am headed.

    Thanks Again!!

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  4. That's awesome! I love this necklace! :)

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  5. You my friend are a true artist!!!!!!

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  6. Hey can I buy one from you.

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  7. I rarely sell to keep from getting burned out on my hobby, instead encourage folks to give knot work a try themselves.

    If someone is just looking to buy, I'd suggest looking for sellers on ebay, etsy, or knot related Facebook groups for those that do custom knot work by request/commission. ;)

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  8. This is awesome! Continue your work and let me know where I can purchase somebof your work.

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