I offer a variety of ropework services. This includes fancywork for restaurants, bars, signs, boats and docks. Other services include handle wraps for tools, splice work, coachwhipping and other items such bellropes, lanyards, fenders, sailors rugs and more.
I use 17th century preservation techniques natural and synthetic rope. This is what gives my work a classic nautical look and feel. Interested? See what’s for sale or Contact me here.
This is a 1 inch climbing rope made from cotton and nylon. It was made for Knockerball N’ Ninjas exercise course. This piece was made with knots used by the marlinespike sailors who spent countless hours at sea working up rope and a took me a couple weeks to study and build. The original rope was unlaid, spliced, seized, wormed, served and then hand-laid from top to bottom starting with a Mathew Walker and ending with a Diamond and Crown knot. The knots in between are a footrope knots and were used to prevent a sailor’s feet from slipping when setting the sails. Turk’s head coverings were made to help prevent wear and add color.
25ft of rope made about 8ft of climbing rope when completed. If I had to remake this piece I would forego cotton for a synthetic alternative and consider splicing Turk’s heads in lieu of the footrope knots.
Thatching a roof with Sabal Palm. In progress pics below.
I’ve been quite interested the old knot work and stylings of the marlinspike seamen. I tie knots for fun on a regular basis. Here are some pictures of a few things I’ve worked on recently.
The following is a fish scale wrap, snake knot handle with a 5 bight, 7 lead, 3 ply turkshead in the middle
The is a wrap made for a lighter. It’s unfinished. But I thought it looked nice at this stage. It’s starts as a sinnet, then to a mathew walker and finally a standing turkshead with an epoxy layer on top.
This was simply practice. I wanted to tie a herringbone pattern and I was curious how tight I could get the wrap around some PVC. I wanted to know if I could twist the grip off by hand. I found out that after heaving on each strand I couldn’t get it to budge.
I made this to compare a monkey’s fist and a globe knot of the same size.
Here it is. My northern-most hugelkulture bed was refactored into a pond. Here’s the before pic:
Here’s what it looks like after.
Here’s a video of my pond more recently with my aquaponics bed:
I didn’t want to import rocks and was curious what I could use around my area, so I experimented with burlap & with different parts of varying types of palms: cabbage, golden, royal, saw (frond, stem, sheath). I settled on saw palmetto for the first couple years.
I also decided not to use a pump for the first year, the pond was populated with water hyacinth for nutrient removal, hornwort for oxygen, and guppies for mosquito control. I’ve enhanced the pond over time with a solar pump that moves water around during the day (supplementing oxygen) and tops off a rain barrel which drains into a garden bed over night (supplementing nutrient removal).
I wish I could post in-progress pics, but my phone died before I had a chance to back them up. The following are pictures starting from just after I dug the hole and put the liner in:
Playing with aquaponics: This little raft worked well for sweet potato and rooting onions but my the romaine grew for a while then got root rot. I now have an ebb and flow bed I’m trying. You can find that here:
Water powered timer for grow bed
Within a half year, water hyacinth had completely covered the pond. I net out overgrowth and mulch/layer on them on the beds surrounding the pond.
After a couple years the thatch disintegrated and I started using banana stem. It’s a easier to tuck under the liner because it’s flexible (after you roll it) and it’s more locally more renewable for me too; since banana is growing next to my pond :)
So this is just a rain barrel placed on a reinforced carport roof top. It’s about 10 foot off the ground. Pond water gets pumped into the bottom of this barrel, fills it up and overflows/returns out the top of the barrel’s standard 2″ port. The pump’s flow rate is faster then the overflow rate so a ping pong ball float valve is used seal the air vent and force water through the return line. With out an air vent (closed system), the barrel would collapse in on itself from suction as the water travels down the return line. Once again, I’ve used rattail cord & friction hitches to keep things in place and I can just slide up the knots if I need to access the check valve.
Here’s it in action:
