Another handle

Handles are nice. You get to make nice plaiting and beautiful knots. At least you can try.

For my next stockwhip handle base I chose a piece of wood 45cm long and 2cm thick. I shaped it a bit from the end so the keeper would stay more firmly. Then I burned the wood for a nice color effect.




For the plaiting I used 16 strands (8 black, 8 rust), all 50cm long. The pattern is shown below. It seems to me that 16-plait is not quite enough to cover this thick handle. I need to try 18 or 20. I nailed all the strands to the handle with small nails and taped them tightly before building the knots to cover the ends of the plaiting.



With the knots I had a lot of fun. I had several sources of information, but I think the best one was Sidney Wood's Turk's head web page that has lots of theory about knots and iterweaves. Now I understand how to make those knots and I don't have to follow some under-over-sequence that I read (or have tried to memorize). I also got Bruce Grant's Encyclopedia of Rawhide and Leather Braiding. It's got lots of knots and other cool stuff as well.





Anyway, the end knot is a brown 7-part 6-bight turk's head with black herringbone interweave. The other knots are 5-part versions of the same knot. They all seem to be a bit loose, meaning that there are spaces between strands. I may need more parts. I do not need more bights, because 6-bight knots almost slip down. Or then I just need to build my knot bases a bit smaller.



The keeper is made from 6 strands (3 black, 3 rust) that have been plaited with flat 6-plait from the middle (about 15cm). After this the keeper was tied around the handle by plaiting it with tight chessboard pattern. These strands too were nailed and taped before the ends were covered with the knot.