The Official Lanyard Thread

I have tried lanyards on a couple knives, they just don't fit me I guess. I don't like the little thing dangling from my pocket. Clips seem to work fine on their own.

I still have a couple in use that I haven't removed. Had to dig for a photo of one. Basic brass bead that a coworker of mine made. Then a factory CRK lanyard that I leave on for use with the pocket sheath. Don't carry this sm sebenza much though.
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I read recently about pre-shrinking the paracord. After putting the paracord into boiling water for just a little bit, let it dry overnight. I haven't tried it yet, but would guess the tighter cord would make for a tighter knot also. Has anyone else tried this?

And, for a photo, here is a quick test I did of putting a Chris Reeve style lanyard knot on my Chaparral clip. It's not as even as I would like, but it was my first attempt at a lanyard. It was tight enough to not slide off the clip, but a hole would have been better. This is one of the things that has me wondering if a tighter cord would help make a more even barrel.
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I do lots of lanyards, but have never tried boiling my paracord. I find the biggest factor contributing to nice, even knots is the actual quality of the cord itself. In my experience, the stuff I generally find at craft stores is usually less robust than what I usually find at military surplus stores, and doesn’t tie nearly as evenly. I also don’t like it when they bag the paracord, because I can’t feel how robust it is. I prefer the open bundles or reels. It’s obviously hard to tell if buying it online, but the last stuff I got from Knife Kits was good.

As for diamond knots, I personally prefer mine as tight and round as I can make them. Doing so usually means a lot of chasing the two individual strands through the knot a few times after it is tied, starting from the point closest to the knife (the looped end, not the free ends) and working them tighter as you make your way out toward the free ends.
 
It becomes second nature after you do it a few times, but, the WIDE Diamond knot still gets tangled up and sometimes it takes several tries to get it right, so, I recommend getting the regular diamond knot down pat first before you attempt the Wide one! Here's what the wide diamond knot looks like just before I pull the strands to tighten it up

Untitled by GaryWGraley, on Flickr

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I've been absent here for a while as I tend to post just new lanyards. Those go mostly on new knives and my knife buying has been slowing as I more deeply embrace retirement, though I do sometimes either re-hash or re-fresh/replace those tails I've tied previously.

This one is a new-to-me knife that's interested me since its debut, but was one that I'd never remotely considered acquiring for its full price. I stumbled on this Narrows LNIB newly listed on the Exchange for 40% off retail and impulsively scooped it up. It's not the sort that's generally up my alley, but is certainly novel if not unique and makes for a decent carry in situations where one doesn't anticipate doing any heavy cutting, though it's certainly sturdily built enough, just awful thin in hand for a working grip.

Anyway, the bead came from a usual source on the Artsy-Craftsy site and is similar to any number of others I have from this maker. I've been staying away from metallic beads lately and use a lot of G10, Micarta, Ultem, and the like to avoid beating up the knives and clips as I like the tails long and dangly. As a side note here, unlike Centermass Centermass 's preference above, my diamond knots tend to be less compressed and just tight enough to avoid see-through gaps. Not related to anyone's preference for size or shape, Mr.sig239 Mr.sig239 's advice to Danny Linguini Danny Linguini to go slow and easy when tightening up diamonds is spot on--once you get one strand overtightened it's almost impossible to back up and get the knot right.

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I got this bead along with a couple others a while back and finally decided to replace the much smaller one I had on the Voron with something a bit more size appropriate. The knife has a single rear stand-off suitable for attachment, but it's tight to the blade tip in the closed position. I was tempted to take a stab at center-gutting the cord there, but the old lanyard hardly showed any evidence of cutting when removing after some years there, so I just replicated my former method of full thickness with a single snake knot to hold it tightly in place.

I had to scrounge through my bag of remnants and practice knots to find the end of a hank of plain black 550 to use. I guess it's time to order another as it's good to have some plain and neutral cords for knives and beads that simply need complementing.

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Two quite different knives with two very similar tails. The bead for the Spartan Harsey arrived today from the same maker as the one on the Narrows. I was hoping it was a bit darker gray to match the knife's Type 2 anodized Ti--it actually reads as white in this pic--but it's much lighter than the pics at the website. In fairness, lighting makes a big diff and some of the online pics showed it darker than others.

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I had a plethora of knives return from Gary W. Graley Gary W. Graley with lanyards today (well, it's past midnight, so yesterday). I sent The Spyderco and Civivi with beads to install, and the other three were ones I sent over the past couple of weeks that he could choose from to keep if he liked any of them. We found something else he liked though.

I particularly love the Stormtrooper, and the Ultem Bull Tusk with modded Damascus blade (as in double harpoon is gone now) and it's golden turtle bead. He took the Bull Tusk knife apart to mod the blade and it came back perfectly centered. The David Mary Badger is much easier to pull from the sheath now (skinny handle and tight sheath made it an issue). The Ritter and Beseech are much easier to fish from the bottom of a front pocket now.

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Nice DocJekl DocJekl glad they all made it home to roost ! and the Spyderco one has a very neat bead, it was large enough that there was no need to have a starting knot, so, I wedged a slice of rubberized cork between the two strands of 750lb paracord so the helmet bead couldn't move in either direction also causing the two strands to be very tight now at the top opening of the bead.
I tied a whipping knot there to keep the paracord under control and below the bead are three snake knots and a small keeper bead, as everyone knows how those snakes try to free themselves and go wandering about ;)

Untitled by GaryWGraley, on Flickr

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TimButterfield said:
I finally got time to complete my first two. By complete, I mean I didn't untie it after, but cut and singed the ends on these. I don't have beads yet, so it's a diamond knot and five snake knots. I did the Sage 5 first and then the Dragonfly.
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That’s my preferred tie, but I usually only do four snake knots because, well, reasons.
 
Snake knots are a great knot to learn, on a small knife like this Swiss Army Rambler, length is about 2 1/4" long and 5 snake knots brings the lanyard to about the length of the knife which can aid in drawing the knife from a watch pocket easier.

Untitled by GaryWGraley, on Flickr

A small keeper bead at the end helps to stop the snakes from wandering off ;)
The ends of the paracord are heated up until they start melting and then when cool they form a mushroom head that is smooth and wider than the strand of paracord so now that keeper bead isn't able to slide off.

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Thanks, Gary. That looks nice. I need to get some beads to work with. Do you have a favorite source for beads? I'll eventually need more cord colors also as I only have black at the moment. That looks like 550 cord. The cord I used above was 450 as the lanyard holes are small. Your example looks like a nice addition I can make to my SAK Huntsman with the larger cord.
 
Thanks, the beads I get are on Amazon and they sometimes are not in stock, so it fluctuates greatly, some people have found neat beads on Etsy but I've not ventured over there.
I'll PM you a link to those small beads, they are handy for keeping snake knots from coming untangled and add just a little something for the lanyard ending.

And here's a video, I posted before but for quick reference, it shows how to melt the ends of the paracord so they end up being smooth and rounded, a much nicer look overall


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TimButterfield said:
Thanks, Gary. That looks nice. I need to get some beads to work with. Do you have a favorite source for beads? I'll eventually need more cord colors also as I only have black at the moment. That looks like 550 cord. The cord I used above was 450 as the lanyard holes are small. Your example looks like a nice addition I can make to my SAK Huntsman with the larger cord.
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I've been getting most of my beads on Etsy lately. There are a lot of good makers there and a great variety of options, from various synthetics to wood to metallic in both turned/milled to sculpted styles. Lately I've mostly been going with synthetics like Micarta, G10, some mixed with wood or various materials, and brass or softer metal inserts and tubes, as well as plastics like Ultem and others. I'm not much on figurines and such, but to each his own. I've been leaning away from metal, especially larger pieces, as I hate to bang up the knives and clips with big beads on the long, floppy tails I prefer. I will make a point to mostly tie up the lanyard with knots larger than a bigger metallic bead in such cases.

Here the large bead beat up the clip on my Frieze, but it was a good match for the knife and the wear doesn't look so bad given the finish on the scales. I coulda gone with double diamonds in this case, though, which would have minimized the impact.

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Below, I made a point to go larger than this bead with a double diamond as I surely didn't want to damage the finish on my SHF Northwest Coast.

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