KinkyCrafter 20080721 – Nylon Singletail
It’s finally here. Today I talk about my first nylon singletail project. While I included pictures of the various stages of completion, I decided that a detailed explanation of the round braiding process would be hard to show without video, and there are several good videos available at: http://youtube.com/watch?v=UT6u-uetGNY, http://youtube.com/watch?v=PxmLq9Wv1Tk, and http://youtube.com/user/bernie46. I used about 160 ft. of black nylon 550 cord or parachute cord, available on-line or from your local military surplus store for about $80 per 1200 ft. spool, with the core strands pulled out so that it lays flat. For the weighted core, I stuffed a 60″ section of 550 cord with lead shot, available from your local gun or hunting store, and folded it over at the 20″ mark. This resulted in 20″ of doubled weighted line and 20″ of single weighted line. I then braided 8 strands at 20″, followed by 12 strands at 40″, then 16 strands at 80″, each time dropping a pair of strands into the core every 12″ or so, finishing with four or six strands at the end of each pass. For the fall on the end I used a 10″ piece of 550 cord with the core still in it. I doubled the fall over, laid it over the ends of the last set of strands with the bight on the braided side, and then tied each of the strands over all the other strands and the fall. This process is shown in one of the videos for replacing a fall. Once this was done I tied one side of the fall over all the strands and pulled the other side taught. The cracker was made with a few strands of the core material from the 550 cord as described in one of the videos.
Finished product:
Feel free to contact me with any questions that you have at evan@kinkycrafter.com.
Initial setup with the weighted line and two pieces of 550 cord to round out the core:
Removed core material:
Braid started:
Braid progressing over core:
First braided belly complete:
Second belly progressing:
Overlay complete, fall cut, cracker prepared:
Fall and cracker attached:
Completed whip:
Any questions?
