turning old cloth into rope

I ran across this video today on youtube (youtube suggestions is a wonderful thing!), and I thought it was really neat how there were all these people lined up to transform their old sarees (saris?) into useful and beautiful cord. I wonder how strong this rope would be?

I also really love how low-tech this is. He just has the rope making machine connected to his motorcycle (which also makes it super portable, allowing him to ply his trade all over the place). And he just needs some helpers to hold the ripped cloth while the strands are twisted, and then someone to control when all those strands twist together.



(If you're wondering about the difference between twine and rope, R Ranson's got some great explainations here!)

It looks as if he put some sort of spacer/tool over the 3 strands for the bit about turning the 3 strands into a single rope - it would be interesting to know a bit more about the process!

I suspect it's unique enough that getting a couple of bystanders to "volunteer" to hold things or turn the handle wouldn't be hard!

This is another reason to try hard to only buy fabric that contains a single, biodegradable material. I wouldn't want to use a fabric that contained nylon or polypropylene-type chemicals as they turn to plastic dust when exposed to the sun.

I’ve done this by hand using technique in the video below on strips of bedsheet. A motor would surely speed it up!