Simple Key Lanyard

A quick one here- I've been out of a key lanyard for a few weeks, so I decided to whip something together. I tend to like my key lanyards to be low profile so I can get my keys out of my pocket without much resistance. For this lanyard I used a short piece of orange paracord and tied a long two strand Matthew Walker knot as a stopper using instructions from the Ashley Book of Knots. I then added four bight gaucho knots at the top and bottom of the lanyard in tan nylon line. I reference Tom Hall's "Introduction to Turk's Head Knots" to tie the gauchos.

Paracord Gaucho Belt Loop

With summer winding down I've finally found some time to sit down and think about knots again.  I managed to lose some weight this summer, enough that I was having trouble keeping my pants up with my old belt.  I found this Bison Designs Last Chance belt at a local department store. It's been a good belt and I like the fact it is adjustable.  However, with my 36 inch waist there is quite a bit of extra belt sticking out of the buckle with the size large.  In order to help retain that extra material, I gutted some paracord and tied a gaucho knot around the belt. Right now it's a bit snug.  I left the ends slightly long and have them tucked in under the knot to allow for adjustment.  I also anticipate that the knot might shrink a bit if it happens to get wet.  Paracord is made of nylon, and it is common for nylon to shrink when it gets wet.  It would be a good idea to preshrink paracord for a project like this so it doesn't shrink more than desired.

Multi-tool lanyard

I recently pickup up this Leatherman Freestyle CX as a daily deal on Woot.com. Despite the fact that it really only has a pair of pliers and a knife, it was a really good deal. I most often carry a larger Leatherman on my belt, but I thought this might be a good compromise when I am traveling light. To it I added a lanyard made using a 4 strand round sinnet/braid. There was no lanyard loop included with the tool, but I was able to fish a piece of paracord through a hole near the bottom. I started off using directions from the Creative Ropecraft book by Stuart Grainger for the sinnet. Those directions worked okay. After poking around the web I found that JD of Tying it All Together (TIAT) had a YouTube video where he simplified the instructions for tying the braid. So I re-tied the sinnet using JD's instructions. JD's method was very clear and simple- Just make sure you establish the pattern when making the crosses and stick to it. I then tied a 3 lead by 2 bight turks head at each end of the sinnet to hold then ends together. This turks head is a common start for a 5 lead by 4 bight turks head, and is one way to cover a thin item such as a narrow lanyard. I like the fact that it is a very simple lanyard for a simple multi-tool.

Paracord Pineapple Knot Fob from a 2 Bight Turks Head

These are a couple fobs I made using pineapple knots. A pineapple knot is a turks head with another turks head interwoven within. Poking around the web it seems that when most folks tie pineapple knots they utilize a 4, 6 or 8 bight turks head as the base knot. I got to thinking that it would be easy to apply the same methodology to a 2 bight turks head. The first time I tried it I utilized some small polypro chord, but I had a tough time keeping it straight as I made the two bight turks head really long. After thinking about it I decided it would look much better if the knot was tied out of all paracord. You can see the two versions I made here, one in black/green, and the other in blue/orange. The knot at the base is a knife lanyard/lanyard knot. I also made a slide show video for the pineapple knot which is below. I am normally a proponent of making knots "snug", but if you attempt this I would suggest you make it "tight" so as to keep the ends tucked.

Hand Saw Clip Lanyard

This is a hand saw lanyard that I made for the hand saw I use to cut walking sticks and such.  The core of the lanyard is a piece of black paracord.  Over top of the paracord I tied a 4 strand continuous or spiral crown sinnet (click spiral version in this tutorial), keeping all of the hitches going in the same direction.  While I don't consider myself much of a "crown & wall-er", I will say a crown sinnet builds quickly and looks nice.  I did make a mistake and there is a mis-stitch in the sinnet which you can see in the foreground of the picture (boo).  However, by the time I figured it out I didn't feel like taking 3 inches of sinnet apart to fix it.

Then I used this tutorial from the Pineapple Knot Forum to tie Type 1, 2 pass pineapple knots from 7Lx6B turks heads to cover the sinnet ends.  The tapered end nature of the pineapple knot makes it useful for this purpose.  

2 Bight Turks Head Key Fob

This is the key fob that I tied.  I started off with a knife lanyard knot to make a loop out of the black paracord.  The covering is a two bight turks head (two bight by eleven leads with three passes) tied using venetian blind cord which was good to work with and snugs up very well.  The two bight turks head is a handy knot for covering thin objects.  It is also versatile as it can be also cover relatively large diameter objects, and can easily be extended to about any length, as long as one is willing to pull all of the chord through.  There is a good tutorial for tying the two bight turks head on the KHWW website.  You can also follow the Ashley Book of Knots 1331-1335.