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...
What color is that paracord called? Googling blue paracord isn't finding that shade. I like the color you used and would like to buy a few feet.
ReplyDeleteI bought that paracord back in April of this year(100' hank), and it was sold as 'navy blue', labeled Paracord Planet, and came from ebay seller 'outdoorbunker', which is a subsidiary of Paracord Planet.
ReplyDeleteThe shade of blue is a bit lighter than other navy blue I've gotten before from various sellers.
Paracord colors from different manufacturers can vary even when they're named the same, and sometimes vary from the same manufacturer when coming from different production batches.
For folks that are planning on making a lot of a particular item, vendors have suggested buying large spool lengths so that the color is consistent, where if you only buy shorter lengths, they sometimes are noticeably mismatched in color.
It can be hard to discern actual color from photos online. When I edit mine with Picasa, to try and get the best image I can, the color from several pics of the same image often look like they were done with different shades of cord...
So I think I'll try that with a skinny mini. I see you run both strands through the hole at the end. What knot do you finish with?
ReplyDeleteI tied a two-strand wall knot as a stopper on the other side of the lanyard hole, trimmed and melted the ends flush.
ReplyDeleteWith gutted paracord, I didn't think it looked too bad, but you can certainly try other options, like tucking the ends back up under the last few sections of whipping on the handle wrap, going back to make sure any slack is worked out and it's all tight before you finally trim the ends... ;)
Love it. I did these for Christmas presents. "Thin blue line" paracord for my cop son; crimson for my Alabama-fan son-in-law; international orange for my outdoorsman brother-in-law. Easy, and they look great.
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