Saturday, August 09, 2014

The Two-strand Footrope Knot

The two-strand footrope knot is #783 (pg 141) in 'The Ashley Book of Knots'.  It can make for a quick and easy to tie paracord zipper pull, pocket knife/flashlight/keyring fob or lanyard for EDC.

A couple of examples are shown with my favorite Kiko Tiki beads provided by Schmuckatelli Co.







Here's a short video tutorial that I uploaded for tying the knot.



The two-strand footrope knot paracord cross was tied with two strands of gutted paracord.  The top strand with split ring was tied first and put aside, then with the second strand, three of the knots were tied and worked close together.  The top and bottom sections are brought together and the strands from each are paired off to tie the arms out to the side, ends trimmed and melted to finish.

I used leftover paracord scraps for the cross, probably a foot and a half for the top piece and maybe two feet for the bottom, which was more than was needed.
A tightened knot of ungutted paracord uses about 4 inches of cord, so whatever your project, use that figure for how many knots you intend to tie, plus cord length of your loop, and one or two more inches for the end strands to tighten up the knot.

As an example with the neck knife, I used about a 9 inch length of paracord for the finger lanyard/fob with a 2 inch long loop(that's 4 inches of cord in the loop), one footrope knot(4 inches of cord), and end strands coming out of the knot at 1/2 inch long each(1 inch of cord).

Other examples show the knot used as a flashlight fob with titanium lanyard bead and zipper pull on a BDU pocket organizer.


No comments: