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Proper way to make rope hanks

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Mar 17, 2021
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San Diego, CA
I'm going to start my first complicated rigging job soon. Does anyone have an illustration of the proper way to make rope hanks?

I've seen a lot of figure eights wrapped a few times in the middle, but I think there's another step that makes them much more realistic. I remember seeing a set of pictures where the figure eight was pushed through a loop at the end and cinched and it looked great. Unfortunately, i didn't capture that image and stash it in my collection of ship making tips.

Any ideas are heartily welcome!
 
Ok, now I have a follow on question. Now that I see how to make coils at full scale, how do I make good ones for ships of scale? I often just see an hourglass shape with a couple of wraps around the middle, hung over a peg, and doused with glue water. I am pretty sure on this forum I saw a neat way to do it that still looked like a coil but was manageable enough to mass produce. Maybe the drawing above are manageable, but I'm sure I say an alternative as well.
 
There was a thread on here using the tines of a fork to wraps the lines when creating a coil. I’ll see if I can find it.

Here it is. A great idea in my estimation.


Here is another method

 
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I coil running rigging as I would in full-size practice, but I belay the fall and apply a drop of thinned shellac to set the knot. A proper length of line is coiled separately and hung and secured on the belaying pin separately. The coil conceals the belaying knot on the fall such that it appears as if the coil is a continuous length without having been cut. I apply thinned clear shellac to the coil. As the alcohol solvent evaporates, the shellac will thicken gradually (in minutes... alcohol evaporates quickly.) The thickening shellac will stiffen the coil, permitting it to be shaped as needed to appear as if it were hanging like a full-size coil. When the shellac saturating the coil solidifies in the shape formed, it will hold the coil in that shape permanently. It is not possible without the shellac to form and hold the line in a realistic shape. Watered down PVA will not work because it takes too long to solidify and cannot be shaped as shellac-saturated line can as it hardens.

Results example below. Coils made on a form consisting of map pins placed into a wooden base around which the coils were wound. Coils were installed on the model, softened with alcohol, and formed in place to depict normal hanging behavior of full-size line.

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