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Rope, yeah ROPE! · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and we're going to rope
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: you into interest in ropes in this episode the Stuff
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: You Should Know on Ropes.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I had this idea, and this is one of
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: those where it was a very distinct situation that made
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: me think of it, which was on our trip to
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Nantucket when Emily and I went there for the first
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: time not too long ago. We did a sailing trip
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: on a kind of an old school boat sailing boat,
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: and they let me. I volunteered to help out. So
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: I was hoisting sails and raising jibs and things. I
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: don't know if that's proper terminology. And I had that
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: rope in my hand and I kind of looked at
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: it and it was the old school, you know, rope rope,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: not synthetic. It was clearly made from natural fibers and
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: it was braided and very thick and heavy, and I
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: was like, man, rope, It's like, what a what an
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: undersung invention?
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: Had you taken mushrooms?
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: No, not at all, Well, maybe microdoes, but it was
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: definitely one of those moments where I was like, what
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: an undersung invention? Like, if you pulled one hundred people,
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: you would get lots of wheels or maybe gears or
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: fire or sliced bread or the toaster or whatever. But
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: I doubt if you would get more than like a
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: ten percent unless you work in like a sailing industry
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: or another industry that heavily relies on rope. I doubt
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: if you would get a ton of people that said, yeah, rope,
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: that's up there is one of the greatest inventions of
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: all time. But it has touched so much of humanity
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: and the forward progress of humanity.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you'd make a great point. I hadn't
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: thought about it either. I probably would not have said rope.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: But Julie helps us with this, I think. And I mean, like,
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: if you want to till some like really hard ground
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: to try to grow crops in it, try to do
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: that with an ox and a plow, but no rope. Sucker.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if you want to shoot a wild boar from
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: thirty feet away, what are you gonna shoot it with?
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: You're gonna shoot it with a bow that has a
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: kind of rope. And you know we should point out
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: that what we're talking about is cordage. So any kind
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: of bundled fiber that's braided together, that's all sort of
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: a kind of rope. We wouldn't have had musical instruments,
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: we wouldn't have had undersea cabling to make the Internet possible.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: And then what sailing came around that you know, you
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: think about, Yeah, big deal, it helps sailing, But sailing
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: is what helped discover the world.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you got to think of it beyond the America's Cup.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah for sure.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: So like you said, let's talk about rope. Let's get
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: into it, shall we do it? I learned a lot
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: in this and like you said, rope is a type
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: of cordage, not all cordages rope. Rope is essentially made
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: of different types of smaller ropes bundled together, like you said, braided.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: You can also twist them. And you can make it
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: out of everything from synthetic fibers like jute or sisol.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: Sisol comes from the agave plant. Did you know that
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: I did? Oh? I didn't. And you can make it
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: out of wire a little bit. You can make it
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: out of wire. There's all sorts of stuff you can
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: make it out of But the point is is that
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: all of them follow essentially the same method of making
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: a rope. That if you strip away all like the
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: bells and whistles that you have today, it's they're putting
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: this stuff together in the same way that people put
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: it together from the very outset of rope making.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, I think that's the other thing
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: that appealed to me was I was looking at this
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: rope and saw the like an individual strand was frayed perhaps,
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: and I saw how just like human hair like that was.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: And I just love the idea that somebody was like,
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: you know, this thing weak, but put all this together
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: in it strong.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very clever. I never thought about it either.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: But the way that rope is made strong and stable
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: in all of that is because they're twisted in opposing
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: like the fibers are twisted in opposing directions, held to tension,
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: and that I think the impression I have is that
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: you're actually storing somehow some energy or force in the
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: rope when you start braiding it and twisting it under tension.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it creates something that has high torsional stability, so
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: it can hold its shape even though rope is moving
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: around and being tied into knots, and it's constantly twisting
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: around and getting pulled on. And you know, it depends
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: on what kind of rope you have. But you know,
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: if you see these those giant ropes that they still
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: use to tie in like a cruise ship or something,
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's still the same stuff. It's fascinating to me.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: That's right. Let's talk specific jargon, baby, let's I love it.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: I'll let some jargon.
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: All of this stuff is cordage. Like we said, a
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: cord is a rope that's three sixteenths of an inch
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: or less. That's right, use metric ts. It's still a chord.
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: You have to use inches for.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: That, that's right. A rope is a rope if it
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: is above three sixteenths of an inch. And then a
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: cable is when you have several ropes that are twisted together.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: And these can be made from all kinds of things,
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: like we said, obviously the organic fibers you mentioned some.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: We also have hemp, you may have said hemp and cotton.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: We'll get into synthetics. When that came along, it was
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: a real game changer because that provided a little stretch
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: so nylon and polyester and polypropylene, stuff like that, and
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: then wire wires usually steel. And you know, we might
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: call something like that a cable, but it's still the
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: same concept that it's a kind of rope, as a
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: steel cable is or a steel rope is basically a cable.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, wire rope is rope. A cable is a bunch
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: of ropes. You can make it out of sisol if
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: you wanted to a cable, sure, and then a bunch
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: of cables twisted together is called the super duper rope.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: Right, that's right. Good jargon.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: So let's keep going. Let's talk jargon in as far
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: as construction goes. You said you can braid ropes, you
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: can also twist them. I never thought about this, and
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: I watched two videos. The one is it was a
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: how It's made video. God bless how it's made. Because
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: if you ever run into a written or verbal explanation
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: of something where you're like what, go find the how
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: it's made version and you'll see it with your own eyes.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: They've always done a great job. There's a lot, in fact,
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of good rope making videos online.
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: I watched like three or four others they're mesmerizing.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: They got far.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: There's another one we found called how Do They Braid Rope?
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: And it's from the National Film Board of Canada, the
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: Boards of Canada, and it doesn't even have narration. The
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: only soundtrack is the factory sounds like that really is mesmerizing.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: And so you see the two different ways rope is made,
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: and the first how it's made one uses twist, which
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: is a conventional rope. And as I was saying, when
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: I started talking, I never realized that most ropes I've
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: ever seen in my life are twisted. I always just
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: assumed they were braided, and that was just wrong, wrong, wrong.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And when you look at them up close, though,
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: you can definitely see the difference between a braid and
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: a twist. I love in twisted rope. This is when
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: you have twisted strands that are counter twisting around each other.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: Usually it's three strands, and that's called a hawser laid twist.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: But you can also have a four strander, which is
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: shroud laid. And that's if you've ever had a rope.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: And then you've seen at the end of the rope
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: a little guy right in the center of it running
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: through the core. That's the fourth strand. It's like a
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: little core at the center of it all, and that
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: is the child blade.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: Yes, and we should say another piece of jargon. You
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: don't make rope or produce rope or anything like that.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: You lay rope, that's right, just like you lay a cable.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I never thought about that. I thought that
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: meant like actually putting it down. But yeah, no, totally.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: So what about the braid.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: The braid is something to see. Watching a braided rope
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: being created is amazing because there's all these little spools
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: during this amazing like ballroom dance with one another. It's
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: really cool.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: But they braiding is where you take a bunch of
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: strands and you braid, well, you braid them together into
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: an interlocking structure. Usually it has a core, and the
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: core can be twisted and have like a braided shell
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: around it. And when you're braiding stuff, you can use
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: way more strands than you can usually with a twisted rope.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and they're generally a little longer and more appliable
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: than a twisted rope. But I like a good old
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: school rope.
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: I do too, A good natural fiber rope that you
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: can't even get your thumb and fingers to touch because
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: it's so thick. That's amazing.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: Agreed. They've been using rope for probably hundreds of thousands
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: of years. Part of the problem with specifically dating rope
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: is that the early ropes were obviously organic in their
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: nature and their fibers, and so that stuff's not going
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: to stick around forever. We do have some, you know,
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: kind of cool evidence, like thirty four thousand years ago
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: in the Republic of Georgia where they saw flax fibers
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: embedded in clay, and so that was like, all right,
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: it's embedded in clay where it's sort of preserved, and
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: these were twisted and knotted up. So clearly people were
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: using rope back then. But there's other evidence of older
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: stuff too.
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, this is like implicit evidence. It's not direct,
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: like finding an actual piece of cordage. This is like
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: when they found a weaving tool years old in Germany.
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: It's made of ivory. Essentially, it was designed to keep
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: the strand separate when braiding or twisting the rope together,
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: which is still a technique that's used today.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: And then also they found beads, stone and shell beads
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: that start appearing in the prehistoric record three hundred thousand
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: years back. And I mean, try to wear a bead
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: around your neck without some sort of cordage. You can't
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: do it.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: No, those puka shells are just falling all over the floor.
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean maybe you could hold one under your chin,
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: between your chin and your neck, but who wants to
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: walk around like that?
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: Just use a cord, that's right. The idea for all
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: of this probably came from early on when they use
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: roots and vines for stuff like this. And you know,
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: I've got my camp up in the North Georgia Mountains.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: There are some trees that have a like a like
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: a vine hanging down that like it might as well
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: be just nature's rope, you know.
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: For sure? What is I know exactly what you're talking about,
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: but I've never stopped and wondered what it was.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: I guess it's a vine sure, Like it can't be
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: a root if it's coming down like from up top right.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't know if you knew what kind of
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: vine it was.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: No, I don't know what kind of vine it is,
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: But you know, you can sometimes you can like swing
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: on that stuff if it's sure if it's attached, but
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: be careful.
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: I mean, I guess that's what Tarzan used in the
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: old movies, right.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he wasn't carrying around rope and slaying it over
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: tree branches.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: No. The other thing about rope is that it seems
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: to have been developed pretty much universally, Like like every group,
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: including ones that were never in contact with one another,
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: figured out how to make rope on their own. Yeah,
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: and then they just used whatever local types of fiber
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: was available. Like in North America, indigenous people used sinew
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: like tendons of say deer, I saw red deer sinew
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: rope making video. Yeah, yeah, hair, papyrus and reed in Egypt,
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: coconut fiber and bamboo in Southeast Asia. Like essentially you're like, okay,
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: can you make fibers out of this? Yes, well then
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: you can make a rope out of it too.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And you know, like we mentioned stuff like you know,
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: to string a bow obviously, but also making netting to
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: catch fish, shelter to weave together, you know, rope to
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: help like lift up a heavy frame of a hut
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: or something, hauling stuff, lashing things together. And this is
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: what I didn't really think of. But early bridges were
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: made of rope, And so if you want to get
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: from here to there and you can't do it, one
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: of the earliest things you could do is build a
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: rope bridge.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: I would just not have gone across well, or I'd
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: have to go around. But there was a Herodotus wrote
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: in its histories about Xerxes, the first army in the
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: Second Persian War. I failed to look where this like
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: when this took place. But this was ancient Greece, obviously,
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: But they apparently bridged something like a kilometer wide straight
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: using rope and their ships to basically stretch the rope
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: and then put boards over these two or three rope
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: strands that were going all the way across the strait
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: to go invade grease.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, could you supprobl So rope is being used for
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: a ton of things for you know, many thousands of years.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: Then all of a sudden, around thirty five hundred BC,
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: sailing became a thing. Yeah, and all of a sudden
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: it was on. Everyone was like, all right, rope is
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: the key to all of this happening. Can't raise a
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: sail without rope, can't tie up a can't more a
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: ship or can't anchor a ship without rope, So it's
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: key to what we're doing. And you know, people sailed
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: around for a little while, but then the fifteenth century
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: rolls around and the Age of Discovery starts unfolding, and
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden, if you were a nation that
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: was really good at sailing, you could and they did,
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: you could go around the world and start claiming places
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: as your own.
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: Yes, and so rope became a really hot commodity during
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: the Age of Discovery or the Age of colonialism. I guess, yeah,
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: there was another industry that came along after, say, like
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: the navies of the world had started sailing, and that
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: was the whaling industry. For sure. The whaling industry needed
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: way more rope than a typical like you know, battleship
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: or cutter needed, because in addition to all the ropes
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: that like your typical sailing vessel needs, they also needed
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: lots and lots of rope, strong rope to connect to
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: the harpoon that they would harpoon a whale with and
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: then drag the whale around with them for the rest
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: of the time they were at sea. And there was
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: a I guess in Moby Dick. Still haven't read it yet.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: Melville talks about how the rope was coiled so precisely
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: by like a professional rope layer in the bow of
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: the boat. This rope that was connected to the harpoon
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: because if there was any kind of like kink or
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: loop or something in it, it would just take your
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: arm clean off. Like if you got your arm caught
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: in this thing and a whale was rushing away with
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: a harpoon in it, it would your arm was just gone.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know what I'm remembering now too. This
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: was another reason for rope because in Nantucket they had
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: the whaling museum there. Oh ye, So I went to
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: the whaling museum, which I thought was super interesting. And
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: I've never been more close than reading Moby Dick. Like
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: I'm right there. I'm just I'm working on a book
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: right now. The next horror book coming out soon from
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: Keith Rossen, the guy who had been reading lately, is
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: called chron By the way. It's great, but Moby Dick
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: is right there. And the thing that really pushed me
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: over the edge is I just saw that Rob Delaney, Uh,
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: you know the actor and comedian Rob Delaney. He's got
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: a podcast out now called Exploring the Greats that I
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: haven't listened to yet. But he and a professor named
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: Hester Bloom are doing Moby Dick one chapter at a time,
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: and I love Rob Delaney. I was like, you know what,
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: I think everything in life is telling me to finally
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: read Moby Dick and maybe listen to this podcast as
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: I go along and be a good way to do it.
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: Okay, do it.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: So I'm right, as soon as I finished Keith Rossen's book,
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna I think I'm going to dive into Moby Dick.
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: Fine, you can do it. Man.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: Should we take a break, Yeah.
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: Let's take a break.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: All right, We're gonna take a break and we're going
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: to talk about how rope is made right after this, So.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: Chuck, like we were saying that ivory weaving tool forty
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: thousand years ago in Germany, it's essentially like it's still
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: definitely a part of how rope making was made traditionally
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: and then still today. But there is essentially if you
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: were making a rope, say pre twentieth century, yeah, you
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: were following essentially four steps. You have to prepare the fibers.
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: You spin those fibers in a yarn. You twist the
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: yarn and the strands, and then you twist the strands
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: and a rope, because, like I was saying before, a
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: rope is actually just increasingly large ropes twisted or braided together.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and when we say yarn, that's a term that
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: you might think of as twine if you like bought
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: it in a store. We're not talking about like crafting yarn. No,
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: but it just maybe ounts yeah, for sure, but maybe
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: think twine and we'll go over these steps. We're not
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: going to get like super super in the weeds because
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: we've learned that, you know, trying to describe a like
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: a process, a factory process with just your mouth, is
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: that the easiest thing to do. So I would encourage
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: everyone to go look up a rope walk on YouTube,
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: and like we said, there are a bunch of different videos.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: Just pick one of them. And if that doesn't fancy,
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: that isn't your fancy, isn't your fancy, cat fancy, I
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: love your markets just to shout out cat fancy. If
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: that one's not your liking, then there will no doubt
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: be another one. But we're talking about like up until
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: the seventeen hundreds, they used something called a rope walk,
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: which was a configuration of machines at opposite ends of
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: a long space. Sometimes it was an open field. Sometimes
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: it was a big, huge open like barn, but you
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: had a flaming tarpet nearby, which we'll see why in
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: a minute. Maybe you had a water wheel helping out.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: But it was generally human powered, and it needed to
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: be long because they were making long ropes. And in
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: order to make a long rope, you just have to
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: walk this thing down hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: feet until it's twisted up.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: Yep. I mean that's essentially that. And you have to
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: start with fiber. And again whatever local fiber you had works,
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: But do you need fiber to spin yarn? And yarn
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: is step two. Fibers you have to prepare. You do
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: all sorts of things to them, like you beat them,
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: you soak them, you call them names, and then once
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: they dry out, you run them through like giant combs.
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: You pull them through combs to basically individuate them. Right, Yeah,
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: then you start spinning those fibers into yarn. Now you're
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: in the rope making this for sure.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: So you've got a spinning wheel At this point, you've
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: got a person with a bundle of fibers coiled around
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: their waist. It's hooked to a spindle, and then they
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: just very slowly walk backward, feeding those fibers in until
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: you get to the end of the rope walk. And
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: then you have your yarn. But in order to make
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: that yarn into the strand, you got to soak that in,
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: tar ring it through a roller. And then you've got
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: like a usable yarn or twine that you roll around
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: or wind around a big bobbin.
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: Yes, and now that you have yarn, which is essentially
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: just think of it as a bunch of really really
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: thin ropes. Right. Now that you have your yarn, you've
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: got your first component of rope. Now you take the
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: yarn and you twist it or you braid it into strands. Right,
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: so you take a bunch of different lines of yarn,
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: you pull it through a tube which smooths the fibers,
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: compacts it, right, and then you also have it under tension.
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: You want it to be tense. And again you a
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: machine basically pulls it down the length of this rope walk,
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: which are really long. I don't know if you said
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: it or not. Some of them are like a thousand
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: feet long.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, it depends on how long you need your rope. Sure, yeah.
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: And then there's a forming machine that essentially separates the yarn,
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: and on the other side of the forming machine is
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: whatever machine they used to twist or braid it. And
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: then as you just keep walking backward that more and
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: more yarn gets turned into rope where it all comes
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: together at the center and it's twisted or braided. You
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: get to the other end. Now you have a strand.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: You do that a bunch of times. Then you have
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: the components you need to make a rope.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: That's right, and you're going to twist those strands into rope.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: Three or four of those strands are going to stretch
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: between a couple of twisting machines and they have Again
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: you got to really look this thing up because all
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: of this is possible, of course, because of two other
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: key inventions, the wheel and the gear. Yeah, because it's
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: you know, it looks like a sort of like a
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: little horse cart moving very slowly backward. So that's on wheels,
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: and then you have these gears moving in different directions.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: That's making a thing that all these strands are tied
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: to goes in a circle, so it just starts twisting it.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: And you got to have this other thing though, Man,
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: I forgot about the cone. Yeah, this cone that's got
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: these three notches, like you know, one at the top
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: and two on the sides. Like if you looked at
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: it from the front, it would be a triangle. But
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: it just runs through those I guess cutouts from the
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: cone to kind of keep everything from getting like twisted
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: in a bad way.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So on the on the back side of that cone,
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: which is called the laying top, it's keeping all those
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: strands separated. On the front side of it, that's where
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: the strands are being brought together and twisted into the rope.
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: Right again, you just walk backward, you pull those strands
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: through that processor that turn that twists them into rope,
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: and once you reach the end of the rope walk,
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: you've got a huge long length of rope that you
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: cut and you say presto. That's a tradition in rope making.
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: You have to shout presto when the rope is finished. Yeah.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: It's really neat though, Like when you look at this
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: big like rack of bobbins with like maybe dozens of
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: I guess arns feeding through this little doughnut like tube
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: to make a strand and then that all being twisted
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: together with another. You know, these are machines, but it's
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: like the most basic machines you can have. It's a gear,
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: you know, twisting a thing in a circle. So it's
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: like it's just I love the really ingenious lo fi
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: stuff like this.
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, that's what that how it's made video
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: features is an old rope walk. Apparently one of the
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: oldest ones that's still around is in the Sweden city
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: of Karlskrona. It's from the eighteenth century. It's like a
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: thousand feet long three hundred meters and it's Sweden's longest building.
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: Oh well, which makes sense. I mean, there's probably not
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: a lot of buildings that are a thousand feet wide
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: in Sweden.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: Probably just the no, never mind, bad joke, that's gonna say,
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: the Toble run factory. That's Switzerland, though, isn't it.
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: Oh that was great, Chuck. I love that. There was
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: a problem with this early rope up until about the
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: end of the eighteenth century, and that was you were
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: pulling these strands through and they were all the same
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: length when they were twisted together. The problem is is
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: that meant that the stuff on the outside was under
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: higher tension than the stuff on the inside because they
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: were all the same length. Yeah, don't look too deeply
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: into it, just trust me. That's what happened, right, never
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: thought about it. So that meant that these ropes were
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: more likely to fray and crack and in turn break,
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: and that you needed a really thick, heavy rope to
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: make up for that. And then this captain for the
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: East India Company came along the same was Joseph Hudder.
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: Captain Joseph Hudder, and at the end of the eighteenth
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: century he created the forming plate, which is still very
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: much in use today. And it is so simple and
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: it makes so much sense that I would love to
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: just explain it real quick. Are you okay with that please?
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: The forming plate is a disc flat disk and there's
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: a bunch of consent circles drilled into it from made
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: out of individual holes. The fibers go through each of
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: those holes and then they all come together at a
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: center point where they're twisted or braided right well, because
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: the fibers going through the holes that make up the
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: outer circles have to technically travel further to that center
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: point because they're being bowed out. They have to go
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: far out. And then in that means that the fibers
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: used in the outside of the rope are longer than
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: the fibers on the inside of the rope, which means
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: that they're all under equal tension when the rope is finished.
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: And so basically, Joseph hutter made it quite possible for
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: much narrower, lighter ropes to do the job of heavier
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: ropes because they resisted fraying and breaking because of the
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: different lengths of fiber used in them.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: Again, and genius Joseph uder It seems like one of
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: those guys. My brother's kind of one of these guys,
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: and I have a good friend named John Wolf who
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: is one of these guys. Just really smart people that
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: when presented with a almost like a mechanical problem like this, yeah,
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: their brains can just see it in a way and say, well,
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: why don't you just do this? And that I think
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: Josep Huttert might have been one of those guys where
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: he's like, well, you should just do this.
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you're exactly right, because it's that it's
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: that basic. Yeah, but it solves the problem so elegantly.
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: It's it's beautiful.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but you got to have a certain kind of
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: brain to think that way. And I don't absolutely.
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: I'd be like, I still don't understand why the outer
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: edges are fraying, you know, when they're all the same length.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: A quick example is I have a system at my
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: camp where it draws water out of the creek and
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: there's a propane hot water heater so we can have
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: like hot water and a sink. Awesome for washing dishes.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: And it wasn't It was too long of a pool
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: at one point, and the motor, I guess, was getting
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: weaker and it wasn't pulling far enough. And I was like,
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: I don't know what to do, man, this thing well pull.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: I wonder if they have a bigger one. And John
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: Wolf was there and he's like, yeah, I gotta just
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: get Like when I worked for Coke years ago and
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: we had really long lines, we would just put another
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: pump in the middle so it would just get to
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: that point and then that pump would pump it to
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: the other pump. He said, you should do that. I
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: was like, that is so simple. That's either something like
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: Ruby tells me or that you tell me because I
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: would never been able to figure that dumb thing out.
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: That's awesome.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that kind of brain I just really admire.
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: Did you do it?
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and it worked, works like a charm. You
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: should see the flow.
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: That's awesome. That's funny. John Wolf always works how he
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: used to work for Coke into every conversation.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: Oh man, you know Wolf.
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: So is it break time yet or are we still
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: going No, let's take a break. Okay, we're taking a break.
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: Everybody just watch.
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: Us, all right.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: So we've covered up through the seventeen hundreds, told everyone
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: how rope is made. When it comes to the eighteen
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: hundreds and the Industrial Revolution starts happening, all of a sudden,
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: we have steam powered machines, and so rope is evolving
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: at the same time, and like how it's used in
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: applications and stuff like that. So you need like better rope,
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: bigger rope, longer rope, stronger rope, and all of a sudden,
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: with steam power, you could do that. And you know,
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: it's basically the same way you're just using like kind
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: of like everything with the Industrial Revolution, all of a sudden,
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: you could just do it on a much bigger scale
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: using machinery.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting. It's like the Industrial Revolution changed the
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: demands that were put on rope and that at the
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: same time it changed the ways that rope could be
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: made to satisfy those demands.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: Pretty cool point.
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: And it all comes down to steam power. One of
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: the cool things about making rope with steam power with
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: an automated factory, even like this is early nineteenth century,
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: you need rope because they would use rope that ran
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: through the whole factory around like a central steam engine.
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: We've talked about this before and I don't remember what
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: it was in maybe diesel generator, I don't remember, but
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: that main engine spun it moved the rope, and the
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: rope ran around and moved these individual machines. It's one long,
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: continuous thing of rope. It's like the idiom says, you
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: need rope to make rope.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's good idiom.
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: I think so too. I don't know what it means,
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: but it sounds like it.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: Well. They also were had innovations and textiles at the time,
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: so they were kind of co opting some of that
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: stuff to make better ropes. Like one example, I guess
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: is they were able to shrink a lot of stuff
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: to much smaller things. So the spinning jenny that used
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: to be this you know, mammoth machine, all of a
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: sudden you could fit in a room. And because it's
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: in a room and you didn't have this like two
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: thousand foot rope walk, you could like fully enclose that
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: and you could make rope year round, and it could
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: be heated, and you could hire women to work in
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: there because they already had experience working in textiles, so
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: now they could help make rope.
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: Right. So, yeah, the nineteenth century, the industrial Revolution essentially
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: well revolutionized how rope is made, even though it's still
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: using the same technique. It's just now the work is
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: being done more and more by machines. Right, Well, that's
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: industrial revolution at its core, But it didn't really kind
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: of change the types of rope that were being produced
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: as much. One thing that did come out of the
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: nineteenth century was wire rope. That was a brand new
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: thing that the Germans gave us in the eighteen thirties
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: because they needed it for their mining industry. And now
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: all of a sudden, you could build bigger and bigger
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: ships and make them out of metal because you didn't
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: need to use fiber rope any longer. You could use
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: metal rope which people call cable, but again it's still
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: just wire rope.
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: That's right. And things stayed humming along pretty great until
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: the nineteen hundreds came along, and all of a sudden
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: in the twentieth century, we had synthetics upon us. So
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: nylon was the next like real big game changer when
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: it was introduced by the DuPont Chemical Company in nineteen
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: thirty nine as toothbrush bristles. When people are like, hey,
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: if you make these super long and they're not just
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: for toothbrushes, we can make this into rope, and I
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: think it'll be stronger, think it'll be stretchier. And within
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: a couple of years, you know, World War two definitely
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: helped when they had blocked like using raw materials for
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: rope making. So that's when nylon really had a chance
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: to shine.
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and then shortly after that, polypropylene and polyester followed too,
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: and so synthetics were basically everybody was like better living
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: through chemistry in the second half of the twentieth century,
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: and that certainly applied to rope making two and it's
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: still around today. I mean, like synthetics are. You can
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: find both natural fiber rope and synthetic rope as well.
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: But just because of the kind of operations that you
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: see in modern rope making facilities and factories, uh huh,
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: it just it'd be almost weird to see somebody make
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: a fiber rope in one of the modern factories, like
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: synthetic nylon and other kinds of material ropes just make sense.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And the process is really similar because
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: you're you're still physically doing the same thing, but in
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: this case, you're starting out instead of you know, like
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: long fibers that you're running through a steel comb, you're
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: starting out with pellets that came from processed crude oil,
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: like little rice sized pellets of like you know, nylon,
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: let's say. And then you got to melt those down
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: in an extruder and push it through like smaller and
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: smaller nozzles until you get down to the diameter of
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: a hair, say, And then you have this long filament
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: and you know, you have to put it in a
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: cooling bath and so it holds a shape and stuff
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: like that. You stretch it out some on some rollers.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: Apparently the stretching causes the polymer chains to align, which
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: is really going to strengthen it. But after that, aside
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: from having to treat it a little differently, it's kind
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: of the same process as an old rope walk and
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: then a factory as far as twisting the stuff together.
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: Exactly, except that these are done by machines that can
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: spin at like a thousand RPMs. As they're twisting these things.
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: It can make rope super fast. They do that with
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: yarn and then onto strands and then onto rope, and yeah,
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: it's essentially the same stuff again, back to that forty
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: thousand year old ivory weaving tool. And but once you
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: have the rope made, then it kind of jumps back
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: into modern the modern era because you have to do
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: things with nylon rope that you don't have to do
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: with fiber rope, which is like you have to heat
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: set it with steam that helps keep those polymers locked
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: in that same direction. They test them. I'm sure they
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: do this with modern fiber ropes too, but they they
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: stretch them, they jump on them, they beat them up,
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: they do all sorts of stuff, and they have sensors
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: that detect what's going on within the rope, and then
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: once the rope passes some sort of certification, it's maximum
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: operating capacities are stamped on the label and it's coiled
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: up and sold.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. Let's talk about a few specific kinds of
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: rope because it gets depending on what you need to do.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: You might need a rope that's like stretch here or
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: I don't know, stiffer. Let's say, so, if you want
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: to talk about shot cord, that is bungee cord. Yeah,
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: and that is you know, if I've never bungee jumped,
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: but I did learn at one point that a bungee
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: cord was just a lot of rubber bands twisted into
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: a rope. And I don't know if that made me
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: feel better or worse about the whole process.
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, so this is it's silicone to begin with,
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: silicone rubber and it's vulcanized and usually they're made of
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: sixteen different strands and then that's just the core. There's
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: a synthetic fiber shell that goes around the cord. Yeah,
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: and yeah, I think shock chords are pretty pretty reliable
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: for the most part. Yeah, they apparently stretched to about
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: one hundred and thirty percent of their original length, and
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: then Benden snatched back to their original length again without
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: being mall, without breaking sure or without losing their elasticity.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I seriously what I mean? Uh, Well,
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: eventually they do over time, though, I guess because just
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: using regular bungee cords around the house, like old old
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: ones aren't as stretchy as they.
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: Used to be. Good point, And you probably want to
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: go bungee jump at a place that's reputable enough that
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: they're not over using their bungee cords. Agreed, Great point.
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: You've also got spot cord, and that is not super
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: strong or anything, but it has a high resistance to snags.
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: And the cool thing about spot cord it's a cotton
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: rope that's braided and it's been produced by the Samson
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: Cordage Company for about one hundred and fifty years. And
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: if you go to like a big box hardware store
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: or something and you just get like a little fifty
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: foot small thin rope, it's probably a spot cord.
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah. They feel real nice because they're cotton. Yeah, if
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: you've ever used a clothes line that's not wire, yeah,
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: there you go, it's probably a spot cord.
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if you've ever tied up your neighbor to a chair,
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: probably using spot cord, if you're not into the duct
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: tape thing.
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: And came into the room saying, well, well, well look
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: how the tables have turned.
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: That's right. I hope that comes across as a joke.
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: I know, I'm sure that's real world violence or although
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: you could just be tying them to a chair to
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: make them watch the Simpsons or something. Let's say that's
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: what I was talking about.
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: And then another special rope, and these are very special ropes,
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: by the way, it's the lariat. And lariat is the
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: correct term for what a lot of people call lassos,
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: but I lift it up, chuck. Lasso is a verb,
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: and it's what you do with a lariat, which is.
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: Now, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. You lasso a horse
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: or something.
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. And you and I both have our own lariots.
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: Do you remember Kathy with the ka and Phoenix gave
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: them to us at the field.
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: I thought it was Denver, but was it Phoenix?
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: Phoenix?
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, I still have mine. It's hanging up at
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: the camp.
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I can't tell you how many steer I've wrestled
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: with mine.
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: These are traditionally made with horsehair or raw hide. Today
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: they're usually braided with nylon or polyester maybe. But the
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: key to this thing is is that it's stiff. Like
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: I said, sometimes you might need a stiff rope. So
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: you know, if you've never used a or tried to
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: lasso something, you might be surprised to know that it's
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: a it's a you know, it's stiff.
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: It's very stiff, super stiff, and it barely fits in
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: your suitcase from Phoenix back home to Atlantic.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: I know we managed it though.
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah. The way they work though, is a Honda knot
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: which slides up and down the rigid rope or stiff
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: rope very easily. So when you get it around to
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: steers horns, you pull it and the loop closes, but
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: it doesn't close mid air on your way right on
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: its way to the steers horns like it would if
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: you made it out of a spot cord.
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: There's also we can't not talk about climbing ropes. Chuck.
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's what keeps you alive if you're a
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: into repelling and rock climbing. Yep, they used to be
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: made out of plant fibers before nylon, just like any
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: other rope that we're talking about, of course. But you know,
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: if you've seen an action movie from the old days
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: and that rope is being you know, wearing against that
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: rock at the top of a cliff, yeah, it starts
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: going dying, dying, dying, and you're worried about your action hero,
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: then you need to go to a nylon rope because
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: one of the important things about a nylon rope is
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: not going to phrase as much like in the movie.
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: And also if you fall, it's going to be a
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: little stretchier. So in the old days, if you fell
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: like off of Everest in the old days, with a
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: fiber rope, like the entire force of falling is just
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: stops in an instant because there's zero stretch. And that's
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: no good.
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: No, that produces rope trauma.
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: Aha, very nice.
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: It can cut you just clean in half.
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: That's what I've heard.
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: So with climbing ropes in particular, there's a special type
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: of rope construction that's he's called the Kern mantle construction
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: and it refers to the Kern the core like a kernel,
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: and that's made of a nylon rope, and then there's
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: a mantle the shell that has made of braided nylon
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: that protects the internal nylon rope, so the internal kern
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: rope is low bearing. The outer shell rope protects that
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: internal load bearing one. But because they're both so strong,
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: if one failed, the other would be able to keep
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: you dangling. And they're stretchy enough that rope trauma is
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: brought to almost nil. The possibility of it. When you
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: fall off of a cliff wearing a current mantle rope
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: that's right now.
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: You came around in nineteen and fifty three. Yep, the odds,
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: and I guess that's kind of it on rope, right.
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: That's it. One thing that struck me I could not
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: find an answer for it is that in the United
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: States alone, in twenty twenty five, three point five billion
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: dollars worth of rope was sold. Pretty impressive. They're projecting
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: it to increase to six billion in less than ten
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: years by twenty thirty three. I could not find why,
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: what do we need more rope for? I don't know.
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: Maybe gen Z's going to finally discover rope in twenty
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: thirty three, I don't know.
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm trying to think of how like
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: a data center uses rope or something that's like something
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: really like growing fast right now, But I don't know.
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess maybe if you include fiber optic cable.
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: Oh maybe fiber optic rope, I should say in in
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: that that might account for it. Good con Well, that's
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: it for rope everybody, which means it's time for listener mail.
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: This goes back to the voice of God Dan Lafontaine,
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: the famous movie trailer guy in a World, We did
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: a what is say? Dan? M No, that was his brother.
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: He should have heard his voice. Hey, guys, Don Lafontaine,
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: I think we did a shorty on him.
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: Shorty yeah, voice of God.
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: So hey, guys, been meaning to write for a while,
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: and when I heard the short stuff, I was like, Bam,
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: now I have to write. Because my father was a
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: sound editor in New York City and worked on movie trailers,
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: the sound mixes for them, and recording the voiceovers. He
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: met many actors over the years, and also Don, who
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: became a good friend of our family. When my younger
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: brother Travis was born in nineteen seventy one, Don became
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: his godfather. Even my mother loved Don and was always
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: said he was such a neat guy and fun and
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: they spent some time partying with him back in the day.
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: I have some old pictures of Don and my parents,
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: those little square wins with the rounded off corners where
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: everything looks like shades of brown and orange and yellow.
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: You know the ones. Guys, if I can lay my
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: hands on one, I'll attach it, which did not happen,
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: by the way, but I'd be tickled to death if
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: you selected my email to be read on the air
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: like you have no idea. Ll you can even edit
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: down and I won't mind. Smiley face yours, both of you's, truly.
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: That is from Tegwin Allen Stockdale or the nickname.
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: Tag What a name? That is a great name? Agreed, Well,
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: thanks a lot, Teglin Allen Stockdale. I don't think I
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: would ever say your name other than to use.
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: All three agreed.
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: Oh great. If you want to be like Tiglin Allen
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: Stockdale and email us with a great story about something
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: we talked about. We love that kind of thing. You
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: can wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: send it off to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: Stuff You should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.