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Make leather cordage - PEM BB traditional.sand.leather

BB traditional skills - sand badge

posted 11 months ago

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This is a badge bit (BB) that is part of the PEM curriculum. Completing this BB is part of getting the sand badge in Traditional Skills.

Leather has been used for ages to make cordage to tie things together. Let's make some!

Here's one way to do it:

Minimum requirements:
- Make 20 feet of leather cordage
- Deliberately make it either a consistent width or a roughly consistent strength
- This bb can only use materials that existed 200 years ago

Provide proof of the following as pictures or video (<2 min):
- The leather and tools you're starting with
- Midway through making the leather cordage
- Finished cordage showing length
- Explanation of how you ensured consistent width or roughly consistent strength

COMMENTS:

Cheryl Loomans

pollinator

Posts: 337

105

I like...

posted 4 days ago

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Approved submission

I selected a chunk of my latigo leather for strength. I prepared the leather by rounding the corners so I could cut a continous spiral. I used my old fashioned calipers set to a quarter inch to scribe on the leather. I selected an old scalpel to free hand cut on the scribe line.

I measured the leather on my graded mat - 1 length is 34" I created 7.5 passes so:

7.5 x 34" = 255"
255" / 12" = 21.25'

I also took pics of the leather coiled showing some imperfections in thickness but overall consistant.

Ways I could improve:
Maintain a sharp cutting instrument.
Cut the leather into a better shaped circle.

20260930_184549.jpg