Daisy Chain Circle

Pull tag end from loop 1 and deploy as much cord as required.


Cut cord at point A (bight of loop) releasing the needed cord and tighten by pulling on new end.

Joining eats some length and some strength. Also it takes time to knot many pieces together, which you may not afford in a survival situation. I'm always trying to keep my long cords whole.

Here is my currently adopted method (but with more bundling wraps):

[video:youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JZszRXMsow[/video]

We're talking about paracord here, right?

I'm not using the paracord for climbing, sailing, or tying down boats on my truck. Its mostly for shelter, lashings, bundling (tents, bags, ...), flying the Flag, and once I had to tie food up due to raccoon activity (no bears around here - except for the kind that loose to Detroit Lions). Based upon my experience the tarp/tent/pole will fail before the knots let go.

I've been tying basic knots for 40+ years - ever since zip up boots went out with disco, so I'm sure I'll be able to figure out how to tie a knot or two.

We talking about storing cordage in general already. And I don't like the idea of storing it in pieces for general use. My tarps, hammock, tents, bevvy, bear bucket, and what's not - all have a dedicated cordage in their pouches. But I always have a spool or two of cordage for emergencies. Once I have used about 150' of cord to pass to a friend of mine on a float over the water, when he struggled with the current in the inflatable paddle boat. It was just 1/8" nylon string on a zigzag spool (very fast and reliable deployment and floating), but it was sufficient for him to slowly get out of the trouble (the river had a waterfall, the guy could surely escape, but the boat would be hard to recover past it). On multiple occasions I've been using a long piece of Amsteel Blue to rig a line with a prusik to go over a low but slippery cliff (huge polished rock) to/from the river for my little swimmers. A friend of mine once tried to go down a quite moderately steep descent from the side of the trail to reach the 6 y/o daughter of his elderly friends; she's fell, rolled down about 100 feet but managed to grab a little branch of a bush and stop. He has died. A long enough piece of paracord, used just to maintain the balance on his descent, would have saved him for sure. Or they could throw an end with the loop to the girl, so she could fix herself more reliably before help arrived (park rangers arrived in about an hour). All of the above demands fast and reliable deployment of a long piece of rope (paracord will do fine). By the way, american troops now rigging these things on the outside of their packs: http://www.idealblasting.com/drop-linerapidlinedeploymentsystem.aspx A zigzag spool would be even better on these (but harder to rewind).

Alex, that's a cool concept, but it's overpriced for anybody who has a little bit of DIY ability.

No offense, but most methods shown here seem very tedious and pretty much impractical for field use. Unless you're really into knots and fancy braiding techniques (which is a fine hobby per se I'm sure) there are much easier ways to coil paracord.

My favorite is the one depicted in the attachment. It took me an awful lot of time to find a proper picture online but I hope it's clear enough (taken from a German mountaineering manual). It's a very simple technique and most importantly, the paracord can be deployed almost instantly. Unless you're dealing with very long lengths of paracord (say over 100 ft) it's easily the best overall method I've ever seen.

Yep, I've noticed that too. But I have ordered an oval carabiner already ($9) and plan to use my 3D printer to make a splitting in half spool.

Yep, that's exactly what I'm using at the moment (the video I have provided above is for the climbing rope and over the shoulders, but the principle is the same - also had a hard time finding it ).

That device needs to be redesigned from the ground up. The user should be able to attach the carabiner (or a similar contraption) AFTER rewinding the paracord. They designed the spool around the confines of the carabiner, but that's not the way to go. If you're not cutting the paracord, then you're taking the paracord completely off the spool every time, right?

Initially, I was skeptical about the bag idea. So, I tried it out. I fit 100 feet of 550 paracord into the bag in the attachment, and there was enough room in the bag to fit at least 50 more feet. In other words, the bag had plenty of room left. The paracord came out of the bag with no tangles or twisting.

See attachments.