(A Y-shaped separator, obviously, matches the three-hooked ropemaker described here. Grab a knife and whittle out the little (about a foot and a half long) Y-shaped stick or narrow board you’ll use to separate the strands of your forming rope (until you want them to twist together), and you’ll be ready to go into production. Your Incredible Rope-Making Machine is complete! Then add any kind of grip you find comfortable to the ropemaker’s handle board, poke the short ends of the “Z’s” through the board’s holes, drill small “keeper” holes in the rod tips that protrude and secure those tips in place with flat washers and cotter keys.īehold! By grasping the grip of your “handle” and cranking the board around in a circle, you can now turn all the hooks at the same time, at the same speed and in the same direction. Thread the long ends of the “Z” rods through the holes in your machine’s main board and then bend the tails that stick out so they’ll keep the rods from slipping out and hold the loops of twine that you’ll eventually slip over them. You can even drill a set of holes right through a firmly anchored post in one of your fences and, as long as the holes in whatever you use for a handle match the holes in the post, come out with as good a rope-maker as anybody’s! We made our rope-maker’s body and handle from scrap 1″ x 10″ pine that happened to be lying around the research shop, but the shape and size of the components - even the material from which they’re fabricated - are really not important. It’s also important that the three holes in the board “handle”–NO MATTER WHAT THEIR PATTERN–line up exactly with the three holes in the board used for the main body of the rope-maker (try clamping the slabs of wood together and drilling each set of matching holes through both thicknesses at the same time). Nor does it matter if you eventually set those cranks into your machine’s boards in the triangle pattern we used, in a straight line or in some completely random pattern.įor smoothest operation of the finished machine, however, it is quite important that the two main bends in each crank be precisely 90° each and that all three “throws” - whatever they measure - be exactly the same length.
It really doesn’t matter a great deal whether the central “throw” of the three cranks is 1-3/4″ or 2-1/4″. The dimensions shown in the image gallery are somewhat arbitrary. You can change them–within reason–to match whatever materials you have on hand, however, without affecting the output of your rope-maker one bit.)įorm the rods into three identical “Z’s” that look like old-timey automobile cranks (see sketch). (NOTE: The specifications given in this article are for the three-hook machine shown in the accompanying black and white photos. Scrounge up some 1/8-inch steel rod and cut off three pieces, each eight inches long. This isn’t nearly as difficult to accomplish as it might sound. The secret of the Incredible Rope-Making Machine is nothing but a few hooks (we like three, but you can use as many or as few as you like) that can be turned at the same time, at the same speed and all in the same direction. “It’s easy to do–darn near automatic, in fact–once you’ve spent about an hour putting together the very simple, yet extremely effective, rope-making machine I saw working on a ranch near The Dalles, Oregon.” The Incredible Rope-Making Machine’s Basic Principle “Turn that string into rope,” says Travis. Travis Brock, who recently joined the MOTHER EARTH NEWS research and editorial staff, certainly knows what to do with the mountains of baler twine that constantly pile up on farms and ranches from sea to shining sea.
The rope machine in action on a ranch in Oregon.Ĭlick on Image Gallery for referenced figures and sketches.
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