[TUTORIAL] How to make your own rope for Lego MOC's

[Kozikyo86]

Hi!

Many of us, myself too, often need ropes in our projects. Lego provides us with several solutions, but it does not always meet our needs.

A long time ago, when, apart from Lego, I also dealt with modeling, I learned how to twist my own ropes.

Since now I need them again, for a new project I decided to do an instruction on how to do them myself 

I think that such a skill will be useful more than once in your projects, in ships, but also not only!

Write what you think about it 

 

[MAB]

I've got about 20 packs of 50cm string from genuine sets that I usually use when I need short lengths or need to be purist. For longer lengths, I bought a reel of "leather sewing thread" in black. You can get it in various thicknesses such as 0.5mm, 0.8mm, 1.0mm. I got 50m of 0.8mm for the equivalent of about 5 USD. It is not quite the same as LEGO's but if you use the same string though the whole MOC, it does not show.

[Robin_IV]

This is how real ropes are made. Thanks dude for sharing. 

[Elusys Ra Arwal]

I wanted to make a ropewalker and I saw this machine which is great, costs around $200... so I thought, lego! and I barely started trying to figure out a way to make it in studio, then because of time constrictions, I didn't have enough spare time to work on it etc. Though the video is clear and on his channel there are some older versions, so one may try different ways:

 

then I found this video of this yarn twister made of lego, which is somewhat the goal. although I don't know how much tension can make it on other kinds of rope, compared to that wool one:

and then there's this more classic style ropewalker, which is used in model building, this one made out of bricks.

this is an example of a regular one:

  the only problem is that you need a lot of room to make long ropes, compared to the first two models above which are self-contained

[Kozikyo86]

On 8/13/2020 at 9:26 AM, Robin_IV said:

This is how real ropes are made. Thanks dude for sharing. 

Thanks! 

@Elusys Ra Arwal nice movies, I saw few. But I need only 1-2 meters now, so quicer and cheaper is make by own hand 

[Elusys Ra Arwal]

2 hours ago, Kozikyo86 said:

 

@Elusys Ra Arwal nice movies, I saw few. But I need only 1-2 meters now, so quicer and cheaper is make by own hand 

Sure, I was not implying that your method isn't effective, in fact I use it quite often, but I was just expanding on the idea of custom ropes and maybe try to find a way to make those machines out of lego, both for the fun of it and also because they may end up cheaper than buying some professional ropewalkers, which are pointless for someone that doesn't do ship modelling for a living...

[Kozikyo86]

9 hours ago, Elusys Ra Arwal said:

Sure, I was not implying that your method isn't effective, in fact I use it quite often, but I was just expanding on the idea of custom ropes and maybe try to find a way to make those machines out of lego, both for the fun of it and also because they may end up cheaper than buying some professional ropewalkers, which are pointless for someone that doesn't do ship modelling for a living...

I used to glue HMS Cleopatra from paper, twisted over 60 meters of rope by hand ... 

[Elusys Ra Arwal]

1 hour ago, Kozikyo86 said:

I used to glue HMS Cleopatra from paper, twisted over 60 meters of rope by hand ... 

wow that sure is a lot of twisting! How long it took you to do that?

[Styphelus]

There's a guy on e-bay who sells replacement rope. Got 5.0m of rope for 8 bucks.