Barbara Merry - Marlinspike Sailor’s Arts and Crafts: A Step-by-Step Guide to Tying Classic Sailor’s Knots to Create, Adorn, and Show Off

To my granddaughter.

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T his book is based on the principles of marlinspike seamanship, a term used in the marine trades to describe rope work, wire work, and knots. Sailors use practical marlinspike seamanship skills to make, customize, or fix a boats running rigging, anchor lines, docklines, and other ropes and wires used to operate a boat and keep the crew safe.

Sailors also use their marlinspike seamanship skills to make decorative items, called fanciwork. A sailor might employ fanciwork to decorate his ditty bag or sea chest. He or she might tie a wide, flat sennit (braid), or a series of knots to serve as a lanyard for a belt or knife, or tie a decorative flat knot to use as a trivet or doormat.

Earth-Friendly Shellacking

When it was first suggested to me that I write an earth-friendly knot book, I thought to myself, how easy! Knot tyers the world over have been demonstrating their skills for hundreds of years in leather, cotton, hemp, and colorful silks. However, one small but important part of knot tying almost stopped me in my quest: what to use for glue and coating? Ive always loved shellac, but how could I get around the use of denatured alcohol? What did the artisans of old use in place of the toxic stuff? I realized that I needed to use a different form of alcohol. Feeling a little weird, I explained what I was searching for to the first clerk in the first liquor store I happened upon. Nancy Laboissonniere listened to me carefully, and when I finished my story she stepped from around the counter and disappeared down the aisle, a moment later returning with a bottle of pure grain alcohol in her fist.

This will do it, she explained.

All I could say was Wow, how do you know this?

I have a masters degree in clinical laboratory science from the University of Rhode Island, she answered.

Im delighted to report that grain alcohol works better than denatured alcohol for dissolving the shellac flakes.

Grain alcohol can be used instead of denatured alcohol when working with shellac flakes, making the entire process much more enjoyable.

The overhand knot is the most common knot and serves as the base for many more complex knots.

The square knot has many practical purposes.

What I call a package knot is kind of a nick name. The sailors (and others in the trade) tie the first part of the square knot with an extra turnthat way one can tie the rest of the square knot without asking someone to hold it with their finger so it wont slip. The package knot is a binding knot. A true package knot is tied completely differently.

If you look around, you will see knots everywhere and tied into all sorts of strings and ropes: the overhand knot used for sewing, the bow knot used to tie shoelaces, the square knot used to bundle newspapers or branches for recycling. This book focuses on using simple knots such as these to make both practical and decorative projects.

We start the book with two basic knots, the Turks Head knot (described in .

Overhand knots arranged in a special way turn into a truckers hitch that will hold a bundle of branches effortlessly. The overhand knot is also the starter knot for netting, described in .

There is a saying that perfectly reflects the theme of this book: Whats old is new again. All knots begin with a piece of rope or cordage, and explains how to make rope and how to use this homemade rope in several projects. (See the Choosing Cordage section in this chapter for advice on purchasing cordage.) Ropes and cordage have been made like this since the time of the Pharaohs. Lengths of cordage or rope twisted from papyrus fibers have been found in Egyptian tombs. Shellac, used as a coating in some of the projects in this book, was used as a finish for wooden items in China since the time of the Emperor Tang.