I received a special request from a customer while selling at the local farmers market. He had a knife blank that was a bit too big for dear scales, so he asked me to wrap the handle with paracord. I jumped at the chance and spent the next week mulling over and researching ideas. Initially I already had an idea of the kind of wrap i wanted to do. He chose the colors desert camo and coyote tan.
For the wrap design I went with a traditional Chinese sword wrap (tutorial link) for the length of the handle. But, first it needed a good base wrap to cover the metal. This was done using black type I paracord. At first I had tried it with the coyote tan with cores intact, but it made it too bulky.
The next configuration was with the desert cod gutted while leaving the tan cores intact to give it some texture. This configuration turned out to look really good even before I had covered the entire tango. A typical Chinese sword wrap uses only one piece of cord, but I really wanted to integrate the tan, so I figured a way to do it. The end of the wrap allowed me to cover the tang completely.
The next step was to create a bolster/hilt. For this I chose to do a three pass 3P5B Spanish ring knot. This also served as a way to hide the ends of the coyote tan and secure the beginning of the wrap.
The customer also requested that a wrist lanyard be added. So for this part I tied a two strand Matthew Walker knot at the base and ended it with ABOk #541 over-and-under heaving line (Rattlesnake) knot. This knot just help to finish of the theme the cord portrayed.
This was a great custom project that gave me the opportunity to try something new. I am rather pleased with how well it came out.
I would like to venture into to doing more of the these. So I have been doing some research on where to purchase knife blanks. From what I have found they are not terribly expensive. I have already ordered a couple of knife blanks so that can wrap one for show when I sell and the other will go in my own personal collection.
I would like to start offering different products than just survival bracelets. There are so many people that make them, alot of the comments that I hear at the farmers market are that ".....uncle/brother (whomever) makes them". But the one thing that I offer is not just the typical Cobra/Solomon bar bracelet, but lots of different styles and I will custom make one on the spot at no extra charge. I like doing the different style, of which some take about the same amount of time.
While bracelets are quick and fun to make I would like to try to start offering different items. I have a few of my own ideas, but of any body has any ideas that they would like to see, let me know on my facebook page or just comment below.
Thanks for taking the time to check out my website. I wish I could post more but with school work and family it really difficult to find time to work on my paracord as much as I would like to.
