Homemade climbing rope

Grissim Connery · 06-10-2009, 01:20 PM

I was gonna make my own from some manila rope. One site sells it for $.74 per foot. I would like to make one end have a loop, kinda like a noose, so that i can drape it over a branch or something and feed the other end through to secure it to the tree. then i could attach and remove it pretty easily. my first question is what kind of knot would i need to tie? my second question is how much rope is needed for this knot alone? like, if i wanted 20 ft. of rope for climbing, how many more feet would i add just for the knot?

Garrett Smith · 06-10-2009, 02:16 PM

Some thoughts:

You need enough rope to be able to stand on the ground while throwing it over the branch so that you can then feed the rope through the "loop". This might effectively require 50%+ more length in your rope.

You should have at least 3feet of extra rope that sits on the ground.

Basically, you want to know where you'll likely be hanging it, as you probably need a longer rope than you first anticipated.

Patrick Donnelly · 06-10-2009, 05:31 PM

http://www.joesarmynavyonline.com/se...Detail?no=5790
Just buy it. $1.50 per foot for 1.5" stuff ought to be pretty good.

Which is more typical of a climbing rope, 1.5 or 2 inches?

Edit: My bad. When I read "make my own from some manila rope," I thought you meant you were going to be taking a few strands of that and braiding them together. I've seen a few guys do that, but it's not worth it when it only saves you a few pennies for the whole length of the rope overall and gives you a funny-shaped thing to grab onto.

Which site sells rope for $0.74 per foot and what size is that rope?

Joe Hart · 06-10-2009, 08:02 PM

Have an eye spliced into one end. If you are feeling really brave you could do it yourself. It is not REAL hard you just have to be very meticulous.

This link might work.

http://www.animatedknots.com/splice/... tedknots.com

You could try a bowline. I don't think it would be as sturdy as an eye splice.

There might be a better way to do what you want on the above site.

Good luck

Patrick Donnelly · 06-10-2009, 09:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joe Hart

Have an eye spliced into one end. If you are feeling really brave you could do it yourself. It is not REAL hard you just have to be very meticulous.

This link might work.

http://www.animatedknots.com/splice/... tedknots.com

You could try a bowline. I don't think it would be as sturdy as an eye splice.

There might be a better way to do what you want on the above site.

Good luck

More secure than a bowline? A bowline is as secure as it gets; an eye splice might tie with it, but you can't beat a perfectly secure knot. Those things NEVER slip and they're easy to untie if you want to undo the knot. If there is one thing I will never forget from Scouting, it's the bowline.

Joe Hart · 06-11-2009, 06:02 AM

Patrick,
All I am saying is that we didn't tie up aircraft carriers with a bowline. So to me an eyesplice would be better and it looks better. Six of one half dozen of another. Bowlines are easier to tie.

Grissim Connery · 06-11-2009, 08:32 AM

Patrick:
https://www.knotandrope.com/catalog....rowse&c=manila
they sell 1" at $.74, but at 1.5" it's $1.56 which is not as good as your link. maybe i should go with the 1.5. the price for the 1" though is pretty cheap. the cost increases quickly after that. it's interesting because the price normally correlates to the breaking strength when you compare the two.

Garret:
i'm still contemplating where i'd be using it the most. ideally i would just hang it up outside my apartment and use it for fun. climbing trees and such always makes me feel 4 years old. if you put a big magnolia in front of me, i'll get a goofy smile and just have at it in a second. this can actually help me test out girlfriends hah. the girls i like most would get up in the tree with me.

but, since i'm in cleveland, the constant rains would beat at the rope hard, and the winter would leave it unusable. my school gym has an indoor track, and they have a rope, but i don't think others are supposed to use it. sometimes you can manage to get away with it, but they've gotten on me for a bunch of other crap as it is: working out barefoot, doing inverted ring work off the stadium rails, leaving foot marks on the walls from handstands. i recently broke one of those soft, foamy ceiling tile things with my clubbell on accident. nobody saw that one though...

so basically i don't have a set spot. there's several places in the gym at which i could possible hang it. hopefully they wouldn't see me doing it there and i could have fun, but i don't know where would be most optimal. i'm guessing the highest points i could get would be at most 25 feet (20 more likely). I guess i would need like a 43' rope then? if the height was at the high end of 25, i figure i could still reach high enough to feed it

Joe:
That eyesplice looks great. i'd probably want the rope makers to do it though. i used to play lacrosse and did a lot of stick stringing back then. i don't think i would be as confident in my knotting skills in this case though since falling off a rope sucks. not that i've ever dropped off a rope from high up before.....because who would do that......blah

Frank Needham · 06-11-2009, 09:47 AM

If you buy the rope locally from a wire rope and rigging shop they will tie the splice for you. Thats how I did my first rope. Wouldn't you know that right after that I found a gymnastics rope with all the hardware on craigslist for $12.00!!! Oh well the first now comes in handy for other stuff, like towing.

Patrick Donnelly · 06-11-2009, 10:19 AM

Grissim, 1" seems like it'd be pretty narrow. That's about the thickness of a women's weightlifting bar (25mm vs 25.4mm = 1 inch). However, the biggest concern you ought to have is how will you get the rope down?

Getting it up is simple. You have your 25' rope with a loop on the end, and you sheep bend (a knot) another 25" rope on the other end of that. It doesn't have to be a climbing rope, just something to help you thread the climbing rope through its eye. Throw the eye over the rafter, so you have the eye coming back down to you near the floor, the climbing rope hanging on that side, and the threading rope hanging on the other side. (Tying a water bottle to the eye might make it easier to have it lower down to you once you get it over.) You thread the thin rope through the eye, pull, and the eye goes up as the thin rope and the climbing rope pass through it in turns. You remove the threading rope, have at it with the climbing, and then you're ready to take it down.

How? The best idea I have is to secure another threading rope to the eye once you have it tossed over, so that you can pull on that to loosen up the slip knot you've made by threading the rope through its eye. However, that'll leave you with another rope dangling around as your climbing. I suppose you could always carry that a bit to the side though, and tie it to something (light post, railing, etc.) so that it lays outward rather than directly down in your face while climbing.

Edit: Also, don't forget to whip the non-spliced end with twine to prevent fraying. (Or duct tape would work, if you wouldn't mind a mess.)

Aaron Austin · 06-11-2009, 10:34 AM

With two ropes you could do it Donkey Kong style