Politenessman.net

Fun with String

550 cord - if you are any kind of outdoors-man, survivalist, preparedness freak, you’ll have some 550 cord somewhere. This cord is versatile, strong and has a million uses (maybe more). I have a few reels of it lying around and every now and then I get the urge to dabble a little and tie some knots.

There are a multitude of things you can do with it; my favorite is to make lanyards for my knives, or just decorative knots for key-rings and the like. The real expert here, and the place I learned all of the knots I use (I only have a repertoire of maybe four knots so far) is a chap who goes by the name Stormdrane - here is his blog: http://stormdrane.blogspot.com/

His blog is loaded with ideas and information as well as links to other web resources, and well worth keeping your eye on.

Anyway, here area few of my meager creations:

There are two fobs here, one is decorative, the other just an efficient way of carrying a small amount of cord.

This is my British Army knife, with a single strand lanyard, with a noose at each end. One end has a lobster claw, the other is just the loop. I usually wrap the loop around a belt loop and drop the knife into my pocket. The lanyard is long enough that I can use it without having to undo the loop. Of course if I need to get the knife off the lanyard I can simply open the lobster claw.

And this is a purely decorative fob. If you look closely, you can see a little wax in the last knot. I use wax to secure the knot. And the darkening is from heating the knot - with a lighter, very briefly just to get the wax to run into the knot.