The Incredible Rope-Making Machine

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We made our rope-maker's body and handle from scrap 1" x 10" pine that happened to be lying around the research shop, but the shape and size of the components — even the material from which they're fabricated — are really not important. You can even drill a set of holes right through a firmly anchored post in one of your fences and, as long as the holes in whatever you use for a handle match the holes in the post, come out with as good a rope-maker as anybody's!

Thread the long ends of the "Z" rods through the holes in your machine's main board and then bend the tails that stick out so they'll [1] keep the rods from slipping out and [2] hold the loops of twine that you'll eventually slip over them.

Then add any kind of grip you find comfortable to the ropemaker's handle board, poke the short ends of the "Z's" through the board's holes, drill small "keeper" holes in the rod tips that protrude and secure those tips in place with flat washers and cotter keys.

Behold! By grasping the grip of your "handle" and cranking the board around in a circle, you can now turn all the hooks at the same time, at the same speed and in the same direction. Your Incredible Rope-Making Machine is complete!

Grab a knife and whittle out the little (about a foot and a half long) Y-shaped stick or narrow board you'll use to separate the strands of your forming rope (until you want them to twist together), and you'll be ready to go into production. (A Y-shaped separator, obviously, matches the three-hooked ropemaker described here. If you construct a four-hooked machine, however, your separator would have to be X-shaped, etc.)

GATHER UP YOUR MATERIALS

One very abundant "free" source of rope-making material, as we've mentioned, is baling twine, either traditional hemp or the newfangled plastic variety. If you don't have a mountain of the stuff to dig into, it's a sure bet that a dairyman, rancher or farmer in your immediate vicinity does. It's also a guaranteed wager that he'll be tickled pink to give you all the used bale strings you want. Just ask.

The only drawback to making rope from this discarded twine is the fact that it comes in relatively short pieces (five to eight feet long) that must somehow be joined together if you expect to twist 'em into a rope of any length.

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