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In keeping with the traditional look of a wood boat, I'd like to use something other than screaming white nylon rope on my boat. There's Promanila, a fake tan poypropylene rope, and I learned that you can in fact dye nylon rope. Anyone have any experience with either option? It looks pretty easy to dye ordinary 3 strand nylon, and I'm already familiar with the handling characteristics. These will be for dock lines on a light rowboat, so I'm not worried about strength.
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Re: Vintage-look rope options?
New England Ropes makes several ropes for classic/vintage yachts. Their "Spun Classic" makes excellent dock lines for small rowing boats and daysailers.
For laid rope, they've got
Spun Classic: It's a made from spun (short-strand) Dacron, so it's a little fuzzy and looks like old-school cotton yacht line.
The Spun Classic is nice stuff. Splices easily. Weathers to a nice soft grey.
Vintage 3-Strand. It's a mixture of spun and filament Dacron. Not as nice as the Spun Classic, but it comes in buff (and black):
In braid, they have
Vintage Sta-Set. Just like their regular Sta-Set with a buff cover (pity they don't make a Vintage Sta-Set X, though):
Endura Classic. Buff Dacron cover with a Dyneema core:
You would not enjoy Nietzsche, sir. He is fundamentally unsound. — P.G. Wodehouse (Carry On, Jeeves) -
Re: Vintage-look rope options?
Dock lines are usually nylon, not polyester (Dacron) or polypropylene because they don't stretch for shock absorption as well as nylon does. Whether or not that is important for a dinghy is up to you. Back in the days when I wanted non-white polyester for roping sails, I had to make my own and tried a lot of options. The one that worked best, lasted over time and didn't come off on anything else was not dye, it was oil-based wood stain. The best rope to use was white filament Dacron (NER classic). The fuzzy, spun version didn't take either stain or dye well. I never had a reason to try it with nylon, as it isn't useful for sailmaking, but supposedly nylon is easier to dye or tint.
This is the process that I used, usually using Minwax oil stain in Early American shade. The rope was coiled into a coffee can, the stain poured in, and it was allowed to sit in there for a few minutes. The stain was then poured off, replaced with a good naphtha rinse, then wiped off, allowed to dry and then washed using Dawn and hot water. It is important to rinse it well to prevent the rope from getting stiff. If you choose not to use a pre-colored line, a similar technique might be worth trying on nylon 3-strand. In any case do a test on a small piece before you sink a lot of money into the project.
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Re: Vintage-look rope options?
It doesn't really matter what type of rope I use. The boat won't really be 'docked' for any amount of time. The boat will live on a trailer, and only be tied up while we're boarding and loading gear. Stretch and shock qualities don't really enter the equation. Interesting idea using wood stain; I have plenty of that around. I'll try a small piece of nylon and see what happens. The options from New England Ropes look promising, too. I like the idea of a rope that feels like cotton. I loved that stuff on my old Snipe.Comment
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Re: Vintage-look rope options?
Todd's wood stain thing works great on Dacron/polyester rope. I haven't tried it on nylon so no opinion as to its effectiveness, but let us know what happens if you try it!
I was mostly concerned with the eye-shock of pure white rope in the sunshine, why I stained my dacron. Cheap, fast, easy, effective... what's not to like?
For dock lines? What difference does it make?
It's temporary, unless sitting exposed while you're out on the water & are uncomfortable with the glare.
There's still cotton three-strand if that's what you're hankering for....Comment
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Re: Vintage-look rope options?
Well, a timely thread, thanks. I'm looking to see what rope I should use on the 1830's 6 pounder cannon swivelling gun carriage we are building. It's for the recoil and run up gear. Hemp is traditional, but the gun will be on display outside.
It is very unlikely to ever be fired again.Comment
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Re: Vintage-look rope options?
I really like Hempex. it fades in the sun less than other syntheticsThere is a joy in madness, that only mad men know. -NieztscheComment
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Re: Vintage-look rope options?
The stained filament Dacron seems to hold up to UV and weather pretty well. My wife used some out in the garden for holding up her berry bushes and over about ten years it faded some, but it still looks pretty decent. Dacron is better at UV resistance than nylon and the stain may even help a bit with UV protection.
New vs. weathered.
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Re: Vintage-look rope options?
Hey Mr. Bradshaw
Is there any reason your method wouldn't work with white dacron/polyester yacht braid ?Comment
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Re: Vintage-look rope options?
Don't know. You would just have to try it and see. I used it on various diameters of the NER filament Dacron, on Dacron 1/8" leech line and on polyester sail twine and it worked great. The fuzzy braids (both 3-strand and kernmantle) mostly didn't work and wouldn't absorb it well for some reason. They just came out looking dirty.Comment
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Re: Vintage-look rope options?
Hey Todd, thanks for your input. Just a question, does it stiffen the rope once dried?
cheers
steveComment
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Re: Vintage-look rope options?
It will if you don't rinse it enough. Otherwise, not really - at least with the filament Dacron 3-strand. You always want to start with a color that is darker than your final result because a fair bit of the color will wash out during the rinse part of the program. The "scientific" inspiration for the process was accidentally splattering some wood stain on a white T shirt while working on some oak trim boards for our house and realizing that no matter what you did to it, the chances of getting it all out were minimal at best. You could get it to the point that the fabric wasn't stiff, but you would never get all the color out.
I used a similar technique when I built new wingnets for our trimaran and a new trampoline for an old Hobie Cat that we owned for a while. I used a French polyester mesh, which only comes in white and which is a bit too soft to ever stay clean for long, but it is really nice stuff. I bought a chunk of rain gutter, rolled the mesh up, filled the gutter with a fair amount of flat black enamel and dunked the roll in it. Then I poured off the excess paint, poured in some naphtha and rinsed it quickly, leaving a nice charcoal grey mesh. I left a bit more paint on it to stiffen it up a bit. The edges eventually got bound with Dacron sailcloth strips, covered with black Sunbrella - the Dacron for strength and the ability to hold the lacing grommets well and the Sunbrella top layer for UV protection. It's a fair bit of work, but it really makes a nice trampoline. This piece is shown sitting on top of a black mesh which is not part of the white mesh and they're shown about actual size. If you are hiked out on a cat, flying a hull to the point where the wind gets under a solid vinyl tramp, you're screwed. The white mesh has good ventilation, which can prevent that from happening.
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Re: Vintage-look rope options?
That makes sense. ThanksComment
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Re: Vintage-look rope options?
Todd, I've always been impressed by guys like you who have the intuition and patience to come up solutions (like the Hobie trampoline) that you've shared with us over the years. Thanks.Comment
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Re: Vintage-look rope options?
I found a couple of leftover scraps of the tramp fabric, before and after treatment. I wouldn't really call the grey version stiff, but it definitely is a bit stiffer and has a bit more body than the white version has. The holes are about 1/4" in diameter. The enamel was flat black Rustoleum, rinsed out with naphtha.
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p.s. the weave looks a bit different because the white one is showing the back side and the grey one is showing the topside of the fabric. Sailrite sells this stuff for something like $29 per yard.Last edited by Todd Bradshaw; 06-09-2023, 12:45 PM.Comment
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