Horsewright
Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
- Joined
- Oct 4, 2011
- Messages
- 13,037
There is a type of rope called a reata. Its traditional use is for roping cattle for branding or doctoring. A reata is made by braiding 4 strands of rawhide together to form the rope. There are fancy 6 strand braided ones and there are twisted ones where the strands are twisted together like a regular rope. These are rare though and not seen much. Your average buckaroo swinging "the rawhide" is using a 4 strand braided reata. Rawhide is just that. It is untanned animal hide. Leather is tanned hide, rawhide is not tanned, its had the hair removed and fat and membranes scraped off of the flesh side but its not been tanned at all. Consequently a side of rawhide is literally as stiff as a board.
Braided reatas are expensive because they are crazy labor intensive. Good using ones can run $7-$8 a foot. And these are using ones, not fancy collector reatas made by a "name". A person that knows what they are doing can braid one in about a week. Like any project much of the success is in the preperation of the materials. That week doesn't count the the prep time.
I've roped with reatas for many years. This one is about 75' long.
They can be very tempermental, fragile things but can also be absolutely wonderful to rope with. They are favored by many cattlemen for the simple reason you can't be rough with the cattle with one. It will break. After a calf is roped I will wrap the reata a couple of times around the saddle horn and then as the calf hits the end of the reata, I allow the reata to slip some so that the calf comes to a gradual stop instead of an abrupt jerking stop. Wrapping the rope around the horn is called dallying. If I don't allow my dallies to run the reata wil break, that simple. So in effect in this style of roping the horn is more of a clutch than a break. If ya look close at the grey "mulehide" around my saddle horn you can see its had quite a few reatas run around it.
So anyhoo a buddy of mine has started on making one and I thought I'd post up a few pics of it here. There had been lots of discussion about cutting of leather and what I found interesting in this situation is the knife that Steve choose to cut his rawhide with. He'd experimented with some utility knives, kitchen knives and just about all kinds of sharp edges. I'd even loaned him some old Osborne roundknives that I'd ground down over the years into half round teardrop shapes. He'd tried some special string cutters for lacing and you name it he tried it. What did he end up using? His damascus EDC (Tapadero Model) that I'd made him some years ago Now as a knife maker I'd of told ya damascus was the wrong steel and the Tapadero was way the wrong shape. Its kind of long and pointy and was designed for the branding pen (great for castration and ear marking of cattle thats what its job was inteded for). But here ya go. Moral of the story is use what works for you and what you can do the best job with. here in these pics Steve is cutting the bad spots out of his side of rawhide. He'll then cut it into a large circle. From that circle he will cut four 1/4" strings each 90' long. There's more prep work that goes into the strings before the braiding but thats what he's doing with his knife.
So to braid a 60' reata Steve needs 90' strings.
Thought this might be of interst. I found it interesting that the knife that "shouldn't" work well for this task is what he prefers. Steve could also afford any specialized tool for this job he might want. This is what worked best for him. Questions and comments are welcome of course.
Braided reatas are expensive because they are crazy labor intensive. Good using ones can run $7-$8 a foot. And these are using ones, not fancy collector reatas made by a "name". A person that knows what they are doing can braid one in about a week. Like any project much of the success is in the preperation of the materials. That week doesn't count the the prep time.
I've roped with reatas for many years. This one is about 75' long.
They can be very tempermental, fragile things but can also be absolutely wonderful to rope with. They are favored by many cattlemen for the simple reason you can't be rough with the cattle with one. It will break. After a calf is roped I will wrap the reata a couple of times around the saddle horn and then as the calf hits the end of the reata, I allow the reata to slip some so that the calf comes to a gradual stop instead of an abrupt jerking stop. Wrapping the rope around the horn is called dallying. If I don't allow my dallies to run the reata wil break, that simple. So in effect in this style of roping the horn is more of a clutch than a break. If ya look close at the grey "mulehide" around my saddle horn you can see its had quite a few reatas run around it.
So anyhoo a buddy of mine has started on making one and I thought I'd post up a few pics of it here. There had been lots of discussion about cutting of leather and what I found interesting in this situation is the knife that Steve choose to cut his rawhide with. He'd experimented with some utility knives, kitchen knives and just about all kinds of sharp edges. I'd even loaned him some old Osborne roundknives that I'd ground down over the years into half round teardrop shapes. He'd tried some special string cutters for lacing and you name it he tried it. What did he end up using? His damascus EDC (Tapadero Model) that I'd made him some years ago Now as a knife maker I'd of told ya damascus was the wrong steel and the Tapadero was way the wrong shape. Its kind of long and pointy and was designed for the branding pen (great for castration and ear marking of cattle thats what its job was inteded for). But here ya go. Moral of the story is use what works for you and what you can do the best job with. here in these pics Steve is cutting the bad spots out of his side of rawhide. He'll then cut it into a large circle. From that circle he will cut four 1/4" strings each 90' long. There's more prep work that goes into the strings before the braiding but thats what he's doing with his knife.
So to braid a 60' reata Steve needs 90' strings.
Thought this might be of interst. I found it interesting that the knife that "shouldn't" work well for this task is what he prefers. Steve could also afford any specialized tool for this job he might want. This is what worked best for him. Questions and comments are welcome of course.
Last edited:
