The Ropewalk

The heap

Hemp comes into the building in bales. A good fiber out of a good bale might run a few feet. The rope that leaves at the other end of this building is a quarter of a mile long.

Everything between those two numbers is friction, and friction has to be bought with twist. That is the entire trade. Nothing in this room is anywhere near as long as the thing that will walk out of it.

The hatchel

The fiber is dragged through beds of iron spikes, coarse first and then finer, until it lies parallel. The short stuff falls out on the floor and is called tow, and gets used for caulking and for cheaper rope.

Combing is subtraction. Nothing is added here and the material gets better, which is a thing I have to keep relearning about drafts.

Spinning the yarn, laid right

The spinner ties a bundle of hemp around his waist, hooks a few fibers onto a turning whirl, and walks backward down the building paying out fiber with both hands. The wheel turns behind him and the twist runs ahead of him down the walk.

He walks the whole length. This is why the building is the length it is. There is no room in a ropewalk for anything but the walk.

Laying the strand, against the yarn

Some number of yarns are hooked together and twisted the other way. Not for variety. If the strand were laid in the same direction the yarn was spun, the whole thing would keep taking up twist until it kinked, and then it would unwind under its own load and be firewood.

This is the first counter-twist, and it is the reason the building is not just a long shed with wheels at both ends.

Closing the rope, back the first way

Three strands go onto one hook and are closed with the original twist, back to the right. Between them sits the top: a grooved cone of hardwood that is pushed slowly along the walk as the rope forms behind it.

The top does exactly one thing. It makes the three strands meet in the same place at the same rate for a quarter of a mile. It is not clever and there is no substitute for it, and after two hundred years nobody has found a better shape.

The rope now wants to unwind in two directions at once, and so it holds. Every part of it is under a load put there on purpose by the part beneath it. Take the counter out and you have a quarter mile of expensive string.

Whipping the end

A cut rope starts coming apart at the cut immediately. So the end is bound with twine, wrapped tight against the lay, each turn pulled down onto the last, and finished so the tail is buried under the wraps.

It takes about two minutes and it is the difference between a rope and a mess. Almost everything I would call good practice looks like this: small, ugly, quick, at the exact place where the thing would otherwise start to unravel.

The bench

A rope is not finished when it is made. It is finished when somebody has pulled on it.