Rope Banding

I would agree the first looks more like rope. Have you considered sand shading the same type of wood for a rope affect. If your looking to cut it out of a block you could try using a torch to burn (shade) one face of the block to give the shading affect, but as I have never tried this its just a shot in the dark. Ive done this many times with veneer but never with blocks of wood made to be sliced into veneer.

-- Paul--- Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. — Scott Adams

I think the biggest problem is the big color/value separation of the two woods you used. If you use similar ones, with just a slight difference in lightness, I would guess that the result looks more like a soft shadow and by avoiding the harsh contrast the “form” is more close to the roundness of a shaded rope, rather than a clear line (which in painting/shading always means there is a hard edge).

In the first case it looks like a rope because you can still read the silhouette easily, due to the separation being in the middle. The contrast is still too harsh to suggest a soft form, but it would look like that if you had a really bright light setup on a rope with strong shadows at least.

The second piece doesn’t give the feeling of a rope at all, because in addition to the rope’s single pieces not being “shaded” properly (apart from the hard contrast, I think the dark parts would need to be different) the overall silhoutte of the rope is hard to read because of how the light/dark part goes all the way to the opposing edge and vice versa.

Sorry if my explanation isn’t easy to understand or makes no sense, but it’s a bit hard without drawing it. If you want me to draw/paint up a few things just tell me and I’ll connect my graphics tablet when I got some time and see if I can come up with something to help more than my reply.

As for easy ways to cut it, I probably can’t help much, since I don’t even own a router, which might be the best option for this. I’ll think it through though and come back in case I found something.

Thanks and you are helping.

Paul I don’t think shading will work here. It’s about mass production and shading each piece would defeat the purpose. Good thought though.

Horst I know the color differential is too great, again I made it overly obvious to better see the effect…..............and may have hurt the process in so doing.

No need to fire up your graphics tablet, I understand exactly what you’re saying. The first one is definitely a throw away and after pencil lining in the “veneer” shadow line, the second one looks quite good for a rope in harsh sunlight.
I think that less difference in tones will make it quite realistic and even just a single straw color with the dark veneer separator may be even better and really easy.

Thanks again

-- Paul M ..............If God wanted us to have fiberglass boats he would have given us fiberglass trees. http://prmdesigns.com/

Hey Paul,
Interesting challenge. I went off to Google pics of rope, and I think the suggestion you just made about a veneer separator may work better. These pics don’t show the heavy shadowing except in between the strands.

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Is this to end up as a veneer inlay type application? I immediately thought of a razor blade veneer chopper that I played with.
http://lumberjocks.com/SPalm/blog/13083

Steve

-- -- I'm no rocket surgeon

Thanks, Steve
I remember reading that one but I forgot. You understand. It looks to me as if that would only / best work with end grain, which I would like to avoid. The other thing is that I will likely want the rope in quite small sizes to use in marquetry. (1/4” dia. or less) You Googled much better rope images than I did. Looking like the easy way is the best. How often does that happen?

-- Paul M ..............If God wanted us to have fiberglass boats he would have given us fiberglass trees. http://prmdesigns.com/

Hi Paul;

I’m coming up with blanks. Must be too early for me. I’ll think on it though.

Lee

-- by Lee A. Jesberger http://www.prowoodworkingtips.com http://www.ezee-feed.com

Hi Paul, I realize that you do not want to use end grain, but take a look at this video and see what you think of the method.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZ8Vw9BWIwM
I think that you should be able to create the pattern that you want, and if you are looking at production, a tool like this might give you the reproducible results required.
Here’s an example of one pattern that is not rope, but with a bit of modification . . . perhaps what you are looking for?

Looks like the production version of what Steve mentioned above.

-- John, British Columbia, Canada

Are you looking for a natural rope banding or a stylized one? Would a series of slanted “S”s work? It seems there are 3 elements to each “rope turn” – the 2 end curves and the center straight segment, perhaps it would be easier to build that way rather than trying to create each “turn” out of a single piece of wood.

All of us are watching, fascinated, as you work this out!

Steve

-- Steven Davis - see me at http://www.playnoevil.com/ and http://www.stelgames.com/

Nice start~!!

I think Tinman65 may have it spot on. A heated pot of sand to shade and add depth and shadow will make a substantial difference.

DRUID:
Where does one get more of those flexible razors that Noden’s system uses?
His site has no replacement blade option

-- When the moderator chooses sides, his site sucks.

John, Yes that is just Steve’s suggestion and would definitely work, and looks like something I should make anyway. I just seem to have a bias against end grain. I think I have to get over it.

Steven, I am looking for as realistic as I can make Reasonably.

cr1, I need to make certainly tens and possibly hundreds of these tiny segments so individual sand shading is not feasible. I’ve done enough of it to be very sure of that. However I haven’t completely passed on Paul’s idea about torch toasting the block prior to cutting. That sounds interesting.

Looks like I go back to the shop and work on some of these ideas.

-- Paul M ..............If God wanted us to have fiberglass boats he would have given us fiberglass trees. http://prmdesigns.com/

Hey Paul,

Not to flag a dead horse, but I tried and razor blades chop through standard veneer with no problem. But you end up with lots of tiny pieces that will want to curl up when hit with glue. End grain does not have this problem as much.

Torch shading sounds neat. Not sure how it will work out though. Same problem with lots of little pieces. Still sounds like fun.

CR1: It uses standard double edged razor blades that you can buy at most any drug store.

Steve

-- -- I'm no rocket surgeon

cr1 – Most of the stores in my area no longer carry the double edge blades, but I did pick some up at a local flea market, and if you don’t have a local supply, there’s lots on eBay (just watch the shipping charges).

-- John, British Columbia, Canada

I just picked some up at the drug store. What a surprise!
Tomorrow is launching day for my boat so I may not get back to this for a couple but I’m working on it.

-- Paul M ..............If God wanted us to have fiberglass boats he would have given us fiberglass trees. http://prmdesigns.com/

I managed to squeeze a couple of hours in this afternoon. I built a chopper and did some preliminary cuts. The results are:

Positive:
1) It cuts flat grain veneer just fine
2) It is capable of cutting very small pieces
3) it doesn’t leave the fuzzy edges that the band saw does on the tiny sliced off segments.

Negative:
1) It can’t really cut as complete a curve as I would like. In order to do that it would have to cut a little bit of the other side of the piece and of course it can only cut one side. The resulting composite makes decent stylized rope but there are no indentations between segments.
2) It’s very hard to cut really thin “shadow” lines. This may work better if I veneer tape the dark strip first.

Here are the pieces one with and one without shadow lines. Clearly the angle needs to be a lot longer but I think This just may be the best way to proceed.

It really is a cool rig, and really quick to make.

-- Paul M ..............If God wanted us to have fiberglass boats he would have given us fiberglass trees. http://prmdesigns.com/

Hi Paul, Looking at your first pattern that you posted, I am wondering if one extra step could give you what you want?
Since each segment of the rope twist that you show is to be identical in size, and the opposite sides of each segment are effectively the same curve, how about trying to cut the red edge in the photo below first. Then take that freshly cut piece and rotate it (swap A and B with same side up) 180° in the cutter so that the cut edge (red) is against the same stop. Then your next cut will produce the yellow edge for that piece. It means that each piece will require 2 cuts, but they should be consistent.

Another possibility might be to make a cutter with 2 blades that will cut both sides of the piece simultaneously, but that may produce headaches cutting and aligning both blades to make a full clean cut each time.

-- John, British Columbia, Canada