Tuesday, June 02, 2015

A paracord camera strap...

I finished this paracord camera strap this morning.  After every so many two strand wall knots being tightened, my hands/fingers would cramp up a bit, so this took a lot of start and stop tying in between other knotty projects that I'm currently working on.  

The strap ended up being 50 inches long stretched out; instead of the intended 48 inch length, and my guesstimate of 70 feet to start with left me with two ends to trim, one 6.5 inches long and the other strand 8 inches. I got lucky with that guess, why can't I pick good lottery numbers like that, lol...   With the exception of the gaucho knots, the method of making this strap is not much different than my instructable from 2007.

Moss green paracord camera strap of two-strand wall knots (doubled example diagram), without the extra turn of the 'snake' knot, and gaucho knots on each end. I ended up using over 68 feet of a single strand of cord. Two 12mm (around 1/2 inch) split rings are on each end for attachment purposes.

The one end is sitting kinda low in the wall knot, so I'll run a marlin spike under it to pop it back out a bit.

  
The nature of this knot tied around a couple of core strands lets the end user twist the strap one way to make it straightened along the length of the strap, or twisted in the opposite direction down the length for a more twisted look. It naturally wants to twist anyway, like a rope, but I think I personally prefer the more straightened out look...



And shown attached to my binoculars for now, since I don't have a DSLR(maybe one day...) 

Another project that has been in the works is adding some spare paracord to a lightweight AR15 stock for a friend, with woodland camo and black cord.  Hopefully I'll have a good final wrap to hand over to Roger and hang out at the SwissBianco booth(#720) at the BladeShow on Friday.  If you have any interest in knives, the show is worth the trip. ;)

I finally tried knot tying friend Manuel Zambrano's, 'Manny's Method', for joining the two colors of cord.  I usually just tuck one strand in the other and sew them together, which has worked just fine for me for years, but I eventually get around to trying new things too, lol..  


So far I've tried a few simple common ties, including the cobra stitch/Solomon bar/Portuguese sinnet, king cobra/doubled Solomon bar, and the twisted Solomon.  

Those tested adding around six to twelve feet of cord that can be untied and re-purposed if needed, for simple thing like replacing a broken shoe/boot lace, a temporary fix to a broken backpack strap, a garrote for zombies when the rifle runs out of ammo, so forth and so on...  I'll probably try a Turk's head knot or variation as well to see how much cord that'll add, to look cool on the rifle and be useful too.



Here's a long two bight Turk's head knot( 13 lead/part 2 bight), tripled with two passes of woodland camo and one pass of black paracord between them.  I ran the excess camo cord back and forth under the knot before tightening, but ran into a problem with a few excess inches of cord leaving a short loop to hide underneath the now too tight knot, lol... Will untie and try again. ;) 

 

Another two bight Turk's head, this time with the black cord added in for the pineapple knot interweave.


And a coiled wrap version holding around 17+ feet of paracord, half woodland camo and half black.  This one is also probably the fastest to unravel if the cord is needed and won't leave a lot of kinks in the cord from previously being knotted up which includes quick release type/zipper sinnet knots, which might create weak points along the strand reducing its strength/durability, when compared to new cord that hasn't been exposed to water, sweat, salt, dirt and friction wear, if it does need to be reused.  The coil may also be more susceptible to being pulled out of sorts by branches or other pointy objects it might get caught on that the knotted versions may not be affected by...



6 comments:

jimmyd said...

Hello

That looks cool, a long 3 pass gaucho fan knot would look cool in that space.

Thomas said...

I am curious if there is a pattern that resembles a diamondback rattlesnake when tied. If not I will have to decide on a belt-like design I like then overweave/thread it in after for my AR sling. The only patterns I have found that are close to what I want are macramee friendship bracelets and not paracord. Any knot suggestions or assistance will be greatly appreciated, Thanks in advance

Stormdrane said...

You could search for a particular paracord color/design pattern, which can give the two-strand wall sinnet or snake knot a different look, or browse through this archive to possibly find something more towards what you're looking for. ;)

Unknown said...

Hi, is the snake knot and wall knot the same? I see one photo has 4 strand coming out of it and my snake knot is not as thick as your paracord camera strap. Can you clarify?

Stormdrane said...

I learned the snake knot as starting off with a two-strand wall knot, then getting an extra tuck, so each knot is connected to the next, but some folks refer to the two-strand wall knot sinnet as a snake knot too and use the terms interchangeably.

When you see the four strands, two of those are working ends and the other two are core strands that are being knotted around from one end of the strap length to the other.

See my wrist strap instructable
example. ;)

Unknown said...

This is awesome!

I've done snake knots without core strands and found them really thin for a camera or bag strap.

This is helpful! I'll try this on and post any questions if I have more.

You're a legend!