Part 8 Rope!

Being in a watery/boaty kind of environment we use alot of rope!
This comes in various sizes and mostly black in colour. There is a a reason we like black...it does not get as sunburnt as many other colours, therfore last longer. There is nothing more annoying and painful than a tiny sliver of rope embedded under the skin which you can neither see nor get out!

Rope is in everyday usage. Of course all the boats have various ropes for tie-up, there is a 400 foot long, 3 inch rope for towing the house, along with shorter 'dog lines' for towing logs. The house is tied to its mooring with ropes and that in turn is tied to the shore.
Rope is all made in the same way, just the scale varies and the material.
We purchase most of the rope we use but we do make our own from old gill net.   Gill net is made of a nylon fibre and when its usefull fishcatching life is over can be turned into many things including handy rope.

To start we lay out 3 strands of 200 feet each. These are attached at one end to swivels mounted on a triangular board.

The other ends are all attached to the same shackle.

Along the length of the strands there are two further triangles which help to keep the strands apart during the winding proccess.

Now for the manual part of the operation!!!
Start winding!
As you turn the strands twist. These get tighter the more you wind so lots of 'shaking' of the strands keeps the tension regular.

The winding end stays static but the single end needs to be moved a little closer as the strands get shorter the more you wind.
Hope your still winding!!!

Eventually the single end starts to wind the three strands into one. We can now wind that end slowly in the opposite direction to help with the twisting. The triangle closest to this end is moved down. As the rope starts to form we pull this triangle back and the rope 'makes its self'.

A very simple but effective proccess which takes about 30 mins in all.
Starting with 200 feet of strands we end up with about 170 feet of rope. It is soft and flexible and very strong. It also has quite a bit of 'give' so stretches well. This comes in handy if we need to tie things and allow movement.
They are not the prettiest of ropes but are very useful in those emergency situations!