Wheel covering

[dougs]

Good morning,

I am in the process of covering my 32" stainless wheel with ringbolt hitching to be followed by 3 legged turks heads at the spokes. The material is #48 3 strand cotton twine.

My question is should I leave it untreated and let it collect a patina or should i attempt a coating of some sort when complete. It has been sugeested that varnish would work.

I am also wondering what additional treatment I might apply to the kingspoke. I had thought that its turks head could be made of dyed twine but that won't mean much in the dark.

Thanks for any thoughts

[FrayedKnotArts]

#42 seems a bit large, but to each his (or her) own... I favour varnishing although I've seen them untreated through painted... varnish WILL turn a white cotton cordage a dark colour. Leaving it untreated always seemed to me to be foolish...one spends a long time doing the wheel's cover, why allow it to sun and salt rot after that?

I assume you'll be using three-bight split turks a la Brion's book.... why not try a six-bight split for your king knot and paint it black? The six-bight is quite easy to do as long as you keep the first three bights to one side of the spoke with i bight on the other... when enlarging from a 4 to a 6 (only way I can do 'em!) the additional two bights naturally join with the singleton and you wind up with a nicely balanced turkshead which still covers the ends of both rim flemishes. It takes a bit of learning, but I really like the results.

Happy blisters!