I wanted to make rope like my Grampa Tretter (above), he made a great little machine out of bicycle parts and I wanted to make rope too, so I decided to build my own. The following is a planetary gear, 6 hook setup, made from scrap plywood and a little hardware. You can see it in action here:
I’ve made plastic bag rope of different thickness, by varying hook count, material thickness or building on top of smaller ropes I’ve made. It all works well, but having different color bags on each hook looks the best :)
For as thick as you can make it, I’ve would never use plastic bag rope for any serious load. With 1/2″ rope, you could carefully lift a couple hundred pounds, but I wouldn’t risk any more then that unless your prepared for it to break (and only for testing). But outside of that, it’s fine for utility rope, things like clothes lines, gardening, tarps, etc…
How long will it last?
If you’ve ever picked up an old plastic bag and had it crumble apart in your hand, you might wonder how long the rope will hold up for. To test this, I’ve been hanging a brick by a very thin rope I made in full sun since June of 2014, as of now it’s been 6 months. Whenever I think of it, I go outside and yank on it to see if I can break it. It’s still very strong. My best guess is the majority of the surface area of the material is twisted up inside and protected. But I’ll keep checking it and update this page if things change.
UPDATE, DECEMBER, 2015:
The rope test above failed. I pulled on it and it broke. I hoped it would last longer, but now I know :)