rope borders

[pete]

Can anyone help me with rope borders. I saw Jeff Mosby's tutorial on basketweave and I'm sure that it was of great help to many who haven't mastered that one yet.

I really need help with rope though.

Are there any tricks to make it come out more evenly?

Most of the time I free hand draw the rope and cut/bevel it but I own a rope tool and would really like to work faster

pete

[bruce johnson]

Pete,

Yep, I do a lot of these. Not that hard to master, but a couple tips. First off I use a scribe line for a border. I don't like a cutline, and want my ropes to look like a rope laying there on the ground, not pushed into the mud. I want it to stand up. I bevel the edges of the pattern. To bevel I took an off-the-rack Tandy beveler and ground out a curve on the face to match the curve of the rope stamp. I used a Dremel with the tapered stone to fit the curve. I have three bevelers for the different rope stamps I have. I also had Barry King make me three custom sizes of his "leaf cutter" stamps that match these curves. Makes beveling leaves and flowers a snap when I use them to cut the pattern. Another story.

I lay out the border, and stamp the rope in at the angle shown. I eyeball it, and couldn't tell you an angle. I then go through and match the curve in the beveler to the curve in the rope. It also cleans up an impression if one of the ropes gets a little out of line. The example is exaggerated with the beveling, but you get the idea. I also showed I do a 90 degree corner. Probably at least half of what I do has this border. I like this style of rope stamp. I haven't seen the new TLF ones live, but the impressions and examples don't look like they are what I would like.

[pete]

thanks so much for the help. By the way- do you always slant the rope tool top left to bottom right, and if so is it easier to work left to right or right to left.

Thanks again

pete

[bruce johnson]

Pete,

Because of the stamp design, it only slants that way. If you try to go the other slant, the "points" stick out. No left twist stamps available that I know of. (BTW - another of Don King's contributions was being one of, if not the first, to develop left twist ropes for left handed team ropers).

To line this stamp up, I prefer to stamp with the guide line vertically and go away from myself. I can visualize the angles better that way. If I have to go horizontal I go right to left. I always want to see the previous impression to line up against. If I go the other way, my hand holding the stamp tends to cover it a bit.

[The Major]

Pete,

Yep, I do a lot of these. Not that hard to master, but a couple tips. First off I use a scribe line for a border. I don't like a cutline, and want my ropes to look like a rope laying there on the ground, not pushed into the mud. I want it to stand up. I bevel the edges of the pattern. To bevel I took an off-the-rack Tandy beveler and ground out a curve on the face to match the curve of the rope stamp. I used a Dremel with the tapered stone to fit the curve. I have three bevelers for the different rope stamps I have. I also had Barry King make me three custom sizes of his "leaf cutter" stamps that match these curves. Makes beveling leaves and flowers a snap when I use them to cut the pattern. Another story.

I lay out the border, and stamp the rope in at the angle shown. I eyeball it, and couldn't tell you an angle. I then go through and match the curve in the beveler to the curve in the rope. It also cleans up an impression if one of the ropes gets a little out of line. The example is exaggerated with the beveling, but you get the idea. I also showed I do a 90 degree corner. Probably at least half of what I do has this border. I like this style of rope stamp. I haven't seen the new TLF ones live, but the impressions and examples don't look like they are what I would like.

Now that's an idea worth stealing. ummm I mean borrow.........

[bruce johnson]

I had a couple off list emails regarding making the beveler. This is NOT the same as the concave bevelers from Ellis or others. The curves on their stamps are not as sharp. You need a sharp curve to match the radius of the rope. The stamp also has to be wider than the curve, to avoid chatter marks, they have to overlap the previous impression. The reason I chose a Tandy beveler was simple, I had some extras to play with and they are inexpensive. Basically grind the proper curve, and "point" the corners a bit to fit into the impression. I polished it up on a wire wheel to soften the edges after grinding.

I have made similar modifications on crowner stamps by grinding back the corners and rounding them to steep bevel scallops on flowers and leaves. Bevels on ropes or scalloped flowers and leaves can sure be done with narrow bevelers and walking them around each curve. This gives me the same effect with one hit, and improves efficiency.

One other point, the wider bevelers need to be hit pretty level. The example piece I did was on some scrap last night, after a full day of beating patterns. You can see edge marks of the beveler on some impressions where I did not hit square. On a real pice, clean the marks up.

Edited September 4, 2007 by bruce johnson