A single strand button knot...

This single strand button knot is #647 in, 'The Ashley Book of Knots', page 111.

About 18" to 24" of paracord is usually long enough to tie the button knot and have enough extra to work with for adding a few two-strand wall knots or a lanyard knot, to use as a short keyring or pocket knife fob or a zipper pull.

A Victorinox Waiter is the Swiss Army Knife shown, and a titanium bead was added to the lanyard/fob.

And a collage of knot #646 that I tied, which Ashley mentions in his book that the rim parts resemble the Matthew Walker knot, and that you have to carefully tighten this one to get it right.

Pocket Screwdrivers need knots too...

County Comm recently sent me a couple of their new 1x4 Deluxe Technician's Pocket Screwdrivers.

Using black 0.9mm cord, I tied a Turk's head knot on one of the screwdrivers, starting with a 5 lead 4 bight knot, raised/expanded that into a 7 lead 6 bight knot, then doubled it before tightening.  With the other I started off the same, but after trying pineapple, herringbone, and Hansen variations, and thinking about using a headhunter or ginfer knot, I finally went with a Gaucho knot interweave.

The knurling on the screwdriver bodies is not aggressive, more on the smooth side, good in that it won't tear up a shirt/pant pocket, so I actually grip the knots when rotating the screwdriver in hand.  I got them plenty tight, so they don't move or slide around from where I centered them.  I trimmed and tucked the strand ends and may use a tiny dab of super/krazy glue to further secure them.

The first thing I used one for was putting the smaller phillips driver to work, removing the screw holding the battery cover on my Dungeons & Dragons electronic game, that I've had since 1982, and installed a fresh set of batteries.

The neodymium magnet in the top of the cap of the screwdriver comes in handy for holding on to any screws so they don't get lost.  A nice piece of EDC gear to have around or give as a gift for a tool nut. :)

Playing with the old school handheld game has me wondering where my Football game is.  They were popular 30+ years ago.  It was a favorite, but I haven't seen mine in a long time, probably lost in a move or maybe still hiding in a box somewhere, not good if a battery was in it...

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.

Some paracord work on a Skinny Mini...

I added some navy blue paracord to a Colt Skinny Mini boot knife, doing some lattice lacing on the sheath and West Country whipping around the handle.

I ended up using just under six feet of a single strand of gutted paracord to wrap the knife handle with the West Country whipping, #3458 in 'The Ashley Book of Knots', which is fairly simple with centering your length of cord to start and then tying half knots on each side of the hand as you work from one end to the other.

The textured G10 scales offered enough friction/grip to keep the paracord from sliding off, otherwise I would have first added some silicone tape before going over it with the cord.

For the lacing on the sheath, I used a three foot length of un-gutted paracord, having to run it through the top pair of lacing grommets twice, since there were just five pairs of eyelets instead of six.

The sheath does have a belt clip on the back, which holds to MOLLE straps/pals webbing on a bag/backpack/shoulder strap/vest well enough, but the cord could be used to further secure it in place if carried in that manner.

The rivet holding the belt clip sits up inside the sheath and rubs against the center of the blade when inserting/removing it, but you can't expect too much with lower end of the spectrum imported cutting tools and accessories.  A custom kydex sheath would certainly be an improvement, and is on my 'to do' list for working with one of these days...

Pico Pulls to zip things up...

County Comm sent me a couple of their Waterproof Pico Pulls, one in brass and another in delrin.  I added the brass one to one of the zippers in my jacket and the delrin model to a pocket organizer.

Both were tied with short two-strand wall knot sinnets, each using less than a couple of feet worth of paracord, ends trimmed and melted in place with a wood burning tool.

I put several aspirin in the delrin pull, and a folded up bill of cash fit in the brass one.  That's a $1 bill, lol, need to save up for something larger to go in there.

 

I had a four foot long strand of paracord leftover from the twenty foot length that I used on the bat light grip in the previous blog post.  I used it to tie a chain sinnet as a keyring fob, adding one of the pewter Aquilo Sugar Skull beads that Schmuckatelli Co. sent me a few months ago, finishing with a lanyard knot.