Summer Break - Day 10 - Paracord Bracelets

Last night, we stayed up late watching "The Adventurer: The Curse of the Midas Box" and making paracord bracelets.

Jack has made these before, so he was our experienced professional!  He required the chunkier paracord for his manly bracelets.  Ginny and I liked the thinner cord...mostly because it came in prettier colors!

Here's one of the thin ones partly done.  The standard paracord bracelet uses a square knot.  This is a pretty easy knot to tie.  Jack and Ginny are now masters square knotters!  I believe Jack got a paracord bracelet kit for Christmas when he was 10, and he had no problems with the knots at that age either. 

We picked up some compasses to add to our bracelets too.  Now they are truly survival bracelets!  Paracord bracelets are made so that you can unravel them in an emergency and use the cord for rappelling down a mountain, tying down some gear, or making a tourniquet.  In our case, we also have a compass to tell which direction we are going!  Paracord sold at a craft store is not military grade.  So I wouldn't actually use the cords from the bracelets to rappel down mountains!  But they should be good for tying down gear.  Since our Papa is an Army guy, we do have real paracord lying around the house, but it's not for crafting use.  He used to parachute out of planes and paracord is often used to rig parachutes.

Here is our final set of bracelets from last night.  We did try one multicolor bracelet.  There are a ton of tutorials on youtube for making these, including a bunch of really neat looking variations.  I am going to give some of those other knots a try today...we certainly bought enough paracord!