Lace Width

[willsketch]

I'm having trouble figuring out how thick to make my roo lace for making both turksheads and standard plaiting around a core. I've been able to make do so far by just stepping up the turkshead until it fills up the space provided for the knot, however this is only good when I don't care about consistency between knots. I would like to be able to just measure the diameter of where the knot will be and apply a simple formula and arrive at how thick the lace needs to be.

I've used bernie46's method for regular plaiting (take diameter, multiply by 4.5, divide by number of strands) and it seems to work ok. I'd like to know if there is a different multiplier if you want the braiding angle to be different (ie so it results in differently shaped diamonds when braiding).

[Sovran81]

Ideal angle is 45* or 90* to the other strand. To me any other angle just doesnt look right. I think this angle was originally figured to give most strength and best coverage to flexible tools(thong of a whip). My formula is 1.5 times circumference divided by strand count.

I suppose if you wanted a different angle then figure your strand size and either add or subtract a small percentage of that size to the calculated size.