Quote:
Originally Posted by GTboosted
You're comment made look up the sheath strentgh of the paracord.
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Astute. You and Kirk think like mechanical engineers. That's great.
That means we should also consider the strength of any hardware we use on the ends as possible weaker links.
I wanted to try all this myself so I went to Home Depot and bought 1.7mm thickness weed-whacker material. There was plenty of room to shove it through the sheath after I pulled the white core threads out. 1.7mm was the medium thickness at HD. They had another thickness higher ... 2.5mm, or around there. I'm wondering if that will help strengthen the coil memory? the 1.7mm coil strength is mild. Not sure if memory strength is brand dependent. The only medium material I found on the HD shelf yesterday is called Rhino-Tuff, and it has the slight "star" shaped cross-section refereed to in other posts. I think there is plenty of room inside the sheath to go up another size in whacker material if it might increase coil memory.
I wrapped it around a 1/2" tube for boiling and the coil expanded to larger than 1/2" when it came out of the ice bath. Looks about 3/4" and bigger than an old phone cord. It's OK, but I think the earlier suggestion of 3/8" dowel for wrapping would turn out a coil size we are more conditioned to expect based on all the other manufactured lanyards out there. The first pull stretched the coil out a bit, so I used the reverse twist trick that Nickworn suggested. It went back to a tight coil.
BTW, I boiled and cooled for 15 min each. I have seen tutorials recommend 10. I'm wondering if over-boiling can weaken the memory?
I'm on my way down to Squidco now to see what kinds of clips they might have. There is also a variety of plastic paracord clips and other rigging hardware available at the Army surplus store in El Cajon.
Thanks to all for the inspiration. I prefer this kind of fiddling to doing my real work
EDIT: I just tried jamming two plastics down the sheath. It works fine, so now I've got a double 1.7 mm to try. I'll report back on the coil strength.