Oldies But Still Goodies!

How Do All ;-)

Whilst waiting for a delivery today, I was browsing through some old pictures from 2005 / 2006, and came across some pictures of some nice earrings I used to make, so I thought I would share them with you.

Here are some single strand, modified 8 bight spherical Turk's-head knots, some single strand 8 plait grommet knots and some 4 Pass, Type 4 Pineapple Knots. All are made in 0.8mm braided cord, and to give an idea of size the finished knots are all around 12-15mm diameter.

Top row, single strand, modified 8 bight spherical Turk's-head knots.

Middle, 3 strand, modified 8 bight spherical Turk's-head knots.

Bottom row, 4 pass, Type 4 Pineapple Knots.

Single strand 8 plait grommet knots, and the last pair are 2 knots combined. these are all tied over the end of a finger!

 Single strand 8 plait grommet knots, close up.

 Single strand 8 plait grommet knots, close up.

I made dozens of pairs of each, and either sold or gave these away as presents, so it was nice to see them again even if only the pictures ;-)

Thank you for looking.

Take care,

Barry ;-)

Fluo Ditty Bag, For Sale!

SOLD!

How Do All ;-)
Yup' you heard right! I am selling my pride and joy Ditty Bag.

My Very Own Fluo Ditty Bag is now up for grabs!

The bag is in excellent condition and has never been used in anger, this bag has only ever come out of storage for display purposes!

Please see below for all the details of the bag, and pictures:

 The body of the bag is made from 12oz cotton Duck, and is 300mm x 175mm. the canvas is fully hand seamed and the base has a double seam for durability.

The grip is of Flax and UV reactive cord, and contains; overhand Spanish hitching, wide single strand Gaucho knots and single strand Mathew Walker knots. The hanging loop is 6 strand round braid.

 The slider is a Pineapple knot, and the toggle on the base is covered with Pineapple knots.

 There are 6 hand stitched grommet eyelets around the top of the bag, through which the spliced lanyard legs are buttoned with small Pineapple knot buttons.

The bag can be converted to a shoulder bag by buttoning the double ball toggle on the base of the bag through the hanging loop on the end of the lanyard. 

This bag was featured on the cover and in the pages of Knotting Matters 104.

I was the first person to be presented the Ditty Bag Trophy, in memory of the late Gary Sessions at the joint IGKT & IGKT-NAB meeting at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, Massachusetts in 2009, pictured here with the Ditty Bag Trophy and my Fluo Ditty Bag. An article appeared in KM 105 with pictures.

Below you can see the effect that Ultra Violet light has on the UV reactive cord and also the twine used for seaming the bag and putting in the  eyelets.

 The effect of the black light on the UV reactive cord and seaming twine is mind blowing when seen in the flesh.

The single strand Gaucho Knots ane braided directly to the lanyard,

 Close up of the  Pineapple knot used to close the bag.

Now the business end of the deal!

For this unique, one off and completely unrepeatable work of art I am asking a kings ransom of £395.00

Postage is £7.55 Royal Mail Special Delivery in the mainland UK.

& £23.00 USA. for a custom postage quote for other countries please contact me.

Contact Me: knotty (dot) bear (at) gmail (dot) com

I will not be making any more Ditty Bags ever again, so this is the last chance to own one of these much sought after hand crafted items!

You can see more of my Canvas Work here:

Canvas Work

Thanks for looking.

Take care,

Barry ;-)

Bags, Bugs & Bikes.

Been a Busy "B" Lately.

Bags

A Draw Corded Ditty Bag.

I was asked if I could create a standard sized bag with a hemp draw cord by some folks in Canada, and yes; I know I said I was not going to do this type of work again, but as I happened to have a couple of unfinished bag bodies, and also because I find it hard to say No! I got to work, and below is what I came up with from my brief.

The folks from Canada never got back to me; but luckily the bag has now been sold to another more deserving person :-)

 

Hand seamed in 12oz Cotton Duck canvas, with 6 hand sewn grommet eyelets. 

Threaded with a Hemp draw cord, the ends joined with a doubled Bosun's Lanyard knot, and finished with a seizing in waxed Hemp twine.

The sliding closure; or puckering knot is a single strand Mathew Walker knot, made with my own hand laid Hemp twine; and sized with a natural sealer. 

Some of the tools of the my trade.

Puckered up and ready to go.

Bugs.

In between jobs I decided to do a little R&R in the garden; and whilst minding my own business a little Grass Hopper hopped over for a chat, before gettign down to the business of making little Grass Hopper's with his mate; whom was keeping an eye on her mate from the adjasent Rose.

& Bikes.

And on to the business of serious fun making!

I have been fetteling with my race / road training bike over the past few weeks, I still have a way's to go yet but this is what I have done so far.

I concentrated mainly on the rear wheel and wheel disks, the original Carbon fibre moulded disks I made; and had great success with; actually winning races in my class ;-) have now been passed on and I set about building a whole new rear wheel, the main reason for a new wheel was to trim a little weight off, quieten th e thundering noise I got every time I hit a bumb; and that the original rim did not have enough surface area for attaching the fabric covering.

The covering is is a very light weight ripstop nylon which is stretched and bonded to the rim before being sealed with cellulose.

here on the non drive side you can see the foil tape patch that gives access to the valve stem for pumping the tyre, the patch make the wheel more aerodynamic than if it was left with the gaping hole in it.

I then got down to the business of comfort and made a new air mesh padded seat pad, and pillow neck rest from the same materials, and I can confirm that it is too comfortable, I have been spotted napping on several occasions whilst out and presumably training ;-)

I could not help myself and had to add a nice dimpled look to the pad very cushy.

I still have the new bars I made to fit, which include a whole new brake and gear operating system, some serious chopping and modding going on there.

more to follow soon?

Take care,

Barry ;-) 

A “Single” Strand, Extended Version of ABOK #1389.

 

Yup’ that’s right a single strand version of the two strand knot found in “The Ashley Book of Knots” ABOK as it is known amongst us Knot Freaks.

The knot is shown in the book as knot #1389 in the Turk’s-Head section though not really a Turk’s– Head except in the definition that it is a continuous cylindrical braid.

This knot is related to ABOK #3054; a 17 strand half round sinnet.

ABOK #1389 is actually a two strand knot consisting of an underlying 6 part Turk’s-Head which is then interwoven with another 11 parts; making this a 17 part knot.

We have the very clever French man Norbert Trupiano to thank for working out the trick to make this knot work as a single strand knot, and Charles Hamel for publishing Norbert’s findings.
Please see Charles Website were you will be able to find more information.

The original Diagram as shown in ABOK has only 14 bights on the edges of the diagram, this extended knot as pictured above left uses a diagram with 98 bights on the edges of the diagram.

I was the second person in the world to have tied this knot in its extended single strand version?
And after tying it I can see why ;-)

Anyone else tried it yet?

How Did I Do It.

But first: I must say thank you to Norbert Trupiano for making this version of the impossible knot possible, and thank you to Charles Hamel for publishing the needed information to get a good start, and also thank you to Ognyan Savov and Alain Legeay for bringing this knot to my attention.
First off; I decided to make a small 50 bight version to see how it would work out and get a feel for the cord length.
The diagram I used was copied from ABOK and resized to suit making a pattern with 50 outer bights, which I pinned to a foam covered tube of the right size to fit the circumference of the joined pattern and then tied the knot you see pictured on the left in 1.2mm hollow nylon braid.
I started with about 8 meters of cord most of which was wasted after tightening the knot fully. The finished knot is about 40mm I/D.

Now for the real deal!
I resized and printed Norbert’s pattern to make a cylinder of 220mm with 98 outer bights on the pattern, I stuck this onto my foam covered form and put in the pins for the base knot, this I tied in blue nylon twine.
I then followed the rest of the pattern with the 1.2mm diameter, hollow Nylon cord.
See the picture below of this stage complete.

On its side you can see the 492 pins I used to keep everything in place ;-/ no easy task making this knot I can tell you!

After completing the interwoven part of the knot, I then replaced the blue nylon guide twine of the base knot with the white nylon cord used to tie the interwoven part, now making this a single strand knot.
You can see the completed knot on the form below, isn’t it funny how someone always manages to cut off your head in photos ;-)

Once we got this far; there was no turning back, I just had to finish it, so after checking for errors I pulled the pins and started the arduous task of tightening this beast up.
It took a fair while to get it down from 220mm diameter to just 75mm inside diameter, and after all that effort you can se the finished result below.
I started with around 20 meters of cord and after completing the knot I had just over 13 meters or so left.
I hope you like?
Please; if you do have a go at this knot; let me know how you get on.

Below: you can see the finished bracelet pictured with one of the gorgeous tools PJ made for me.

Single Strand Matthew Walker Knots.

Here is a picture of a 21 bight Single Strand Matthew Walker knot made with 3mm Bitumee; a tarred nylon solid braid.
This knot was made using the same method described below.
Essentially this knot is nothing more than a collection of carefully interlinked overhand knots in a single line, the trick is in the dressing.
The knot pictured has not been painted or stiffened it is pretty much self-supporting if you handle it with care.

I hope this article sheds a little light on the making of this very handsome and practical knot.

Single Strand Matthew Walker Knots.
(Edited from an article published in Knotting Matters 102)

How Do All ;-)
With reference to an article by Mr John Halifax in KM #95, page 16 “The Single Strand Matthew Walker Ring Knot” and also an addendum to the afore mentioned article in KM #96 page 8 in which John asks; “ if anyone has knowledge of this concept of ring knots, please speak up.”

I am very sorry for my very late reply to this question (too busy getting side tracked with other things).
I had asked a similar question a few years back when I submitted what I thought could be a new knot (a single strand Matthew Walker) to Nigel Harding as I could not find any other reference to this type of knot in any of the available material at the time.
I had also browsed the Knotting Matters index published eons ago and found a reference to a single strand Matthew Walker knot in KM # 42, published in early 1993 so I also asked Nigel if he could check this issue for me to see if the knot I had ended up with was the same as the one mentioned.

Nigel was very kind and made me a copy of KM 42 so I could take a look and decide for myself, on page 27 was a large heading at the top of the page “Single Strand Matthew Walker” The article was written by Neil Hood and his diagrams are dated April 1991.
This was the very same type of knot I had made and tried to submit to Nigel. This type of Single Strand Matthew Walker knot can be made with as many passes as is required, so making a full tucked Matthew Walker knot with anything from One to a Hundred or more Spiralling strands is possible with just one single strand, no need to find somewhere to hide all those ends so making for a very useful knot to decorate bell ropes, lanyards and the like.

Also worth noting is the fact that when braiding some Turk’s-Head knots the first few passes made can be a single strand Matthew Walker knot in their own right; like the 3 pass Headhunter’s knot for instance, (see Bruce Grant’s “ Encyclopedia of Rawhide and Leather Braiding”, Page 413, figure.1) this figure is actually depicting a 3 pass single strand Matthew Walker knot, if you continue this knot by going over all at the front (going down) and under all at the back (going up) you can enlarge this single strand Matthew Walker to any size you like.

Here is a diagram I made in 2005, using Bruce Grant’s drawings of a Headhunter’s knot of two passes as my base drawings.
My drawing shows how to tie a full-tucked 6 pass, single strand Matthew Walker knot.
If you decide try this knot for yourself please let me know what you think and if possible please send me a photo ;-)

Note: I make these knots over a plain tube or mandrel, I do not use pins or any other method to guide the knot other than holding the bights with my hands, alternatively you can use a pinned tube or mandrel if you prefer.