What about a bit of rope? You'll want it, if you haven't got it: Well, I'll want it.

Hard Kit is all other accoutrements that are not clothing, weapons or armour. This includes pots and tents, and flint & steel, and other things like that.

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SierraStrider
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What about a bit of rope? You'll want it, if you haven't got it: Well, I'll want it.

Post by SierraStrider »

Rope is usually somewhere in any "10 essentials" list for modern wilderness travel, and I'm not sure how I'd make do without some in bear country. Hanging a bag is about the only way to protect your food, if you haven't got a modern canister.

As such, I recently bought a kilo of 6mm hemp rope and set about preparing it for use.
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I started by cutting a length of about 10 arm-spans--between 50 and 60 feet (15 and 19 meters), for me. I then back-spliced and whipped the ends. This is probably redundant, but the hemp seems extremely prone to fraying and I didn't want to take any chances with just whipping or back-splicing.

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I was struck by how light it was in color, and decided to subdue it a bit. I tossed it in a vat of brown dye, and here was struck by a caveat regarding the hemp rope--it DOES NOT like water. The fibers tightened rather astonishingly, causing it to stiffen and twist to a frustrating degree. My loose hank of rope became one huge twisted knot.

After it dried, it was much softer than prior to dyeing it, so maybe it will have less of a reaction next time it gets wet...one can only hope. Hearkening back to my pioneering merit badge class at scout camp, I believe manila rope would be superior in wet applications, but it's hard to source genuine manila rope, and hemp seems like a more authentic fiber for our setting, anyway.

Anyway, while waiting for the main hank of rope to dry, my reminiscences of scout camp reminded me of another interesting rope project that, while far more modern than what we usually aim for, fits very well, to my eye--a "toggle" or "commando" rope. This is a rope of a sufficient length to wrap three (?) times around the owner's waist, with a wooden toggle at one end and a loop at the other. These really shine when all the members of a group have one, since they can be chained together quite easily. Even without that, though, they have uses. Any time you need to just loop a rope around something, this works; tying a bundle in a way that's very quick to undo/redo, tying off to a tree, hanging a pot over a fire...or just as a belt. So I whittled a toggle and did an eye splice at either end of a rope one and a half arm-spans long. I dyed it as well, and am quite pleased with the result.

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Here it is in belt mode:

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In this mode, it keeps both my hip pouch and flacket from bouncing when I run.

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Here's the toggle rope wrapping up a blanket roll. I think I'll make a couple more of these, of varying lengths. They're damned useful.
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Re: What about a bit of rope? You'll want it, if you haven't got it: Well, I'll want it.

Post by Iodo »

Awesome stuff, that toggle rope idea looks great
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Re: What about a bit of rope? You'll want it, if you haven't got it: Well, I'll want it.

Post by Manveruon »

That’s fantastic! I love what you’ve done here!

Several years back I got a good length of very nice quality hemp rope off of www.hemptraders.com, and it has served me extremely well! I will have to bear in mind what you’ve said about moisture though! I hadn’t experienced that myself, but it’s very good to know!
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Re: What about a bit of rope? You'll want it, if you haven't got it: Well, I'll want it.

Post by Elleth »

For what it's worth, I recently ran across this in the professor's letters:
Yes, Sam Gamgee is in a sense a relation of Dr. Gamgee, in that his name would not have taken that form, if I had not heard of ‘Gamgee tissue’; there was I believe a Dr. Gamgee (no doubt of the kin) in Birmingham when I was a child. The name was any way always familiar to me. Gaffer Gamgee arose first: he was a legendary character to my children (based on a real-life gaffer, not of that name). But, as you will find explained, in this tale the name is a ‘translation’ of the real Hobbit name, derived from a village (devoted to rope-making) anglicized as Gamwich (pron. Gammidge), near Tighfield (see vol. II p. 217). Since Sam was close friends of the family of Cotton (another village-name), I was led astray into the Hobbit-like joke of spelling Gamwichy Gamgee, though I do not think that in actual Hobbit-dialect the joke really arose.
I think I'm correct in interpreting that paragraph to mean the rope-making village is in fact of Hobbity origin rather than English.
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Re: What about a bit of rope? You'll want it, if you haven't got it: Well, I'll want it.

Post by Greg »

Well THAT is interesting!

I love the mental tongue-twister that is Tolkien's 'translation' process. We're reading something in our language that was written in our language, but is being posed as a translation from another language that we have very little information on, about cultures that speak several other languages... *sigh*



I like what you've done with this rope, Sierra...don't know how I missed it earlier. I'm a splicer myself, and enjoy first-rate work like yours. Well done! Looks clean and functional.
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Re: What about a bit of rope? You'll want it, if you haven't got it: Well, I'll want it.

Post by BrianGrubbs »

Between this post and Iodo’s post about her fid that she made, I got inspired to dig up the 50’ of Manila rope I’ve had sitting around unopened for the past...six? years? I wanted to make some replacement tie ropes for my blanket roll, since paracord really doesn’t fit the 3rd age terribly well, and while I was at it, I decided to have a go at making an eye splice.
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Ended up making two seven foot ropes to tie up the roll, and whipped the ends of what was left to attach to the side of the roll.

I don’t have a lot of experience with organic ropes, so this has been an interesting experience for me. I really like the way it turned out though, completely changes the look of everything. Combined with the new linen bag I made for my Swag, it’s nearly Ranger ready, lol. Just gotta do something with the shoulder strap...always a project!

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Re: What about a bit of rope? You'll want it, if you haven't got it: Well, I'll want it.

Post by Iodo »

Looks nice :P
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Re: What about a bit of rope? You'll want it, if you haven't got it: Well, I'll want it.

Post by SierraStrider »

BrianGrubbs wrote:I don’t have a lot of experience with organic ropes, so this has been an interesting experience for me. I really like the way it turned out though, completely changes the look of everything.
Looks great, and should be very serviceable--especially if it's genuine manila, and not just fraudulently branded sisal (which is all I've had any luck finding recently). Manila is apparently the best organic rope for wet applications, and excellent in most other regards as well.
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Re: What about a bit of rope? You'll want it, if you haven't got it: Well, I'll want it.

Post by Greg »

SierraStrider wrote:Looks great, and should be very serviceable--especially if it's genuine manila, and not just fraudulently branded sisal (which is all I've had any luck finding recently). Manila is apparently the best organic rope for wet applications, and excellent in most other regards as well.
Agreed. Until modern materials came into use, manila was the go-to rope for all life-support and heavy rigging applications in the Arborculture and Forestry industries. If I can trust my life and heavy rigging to appropriately rated Manila, it's tough stuff!
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