Spring Wire Turks Head (Like a Monkey Fist)

I saw this knot made of coiled wire online (http://www.de-cors.com/product_info.php?products_id=38) and was ready to order one in a heartbeat. Unfortunately the website only had directions. Well after a few hours I had on made.

I chucked up a .039 piece of spring steel and a 30 gauge spool of magnet wire (radio shack) in the cordless drill chuck. Holding the magnet wire between my fingers I turned on the drill and wound the magnet wire. I did a second piece using a 1/16 inch welding rod and 24 gauge wire. You can see what it looks like in photo 4 when it is done.

The smaller coil ended up being about 10 inches long, which allowed me to tie the knot with about 2 inches left over.

The larger coil needed to be closer to 12 inches.

This knot is actually a turks head. The best tutorial to tie this knot is http://www.fusionknots.com/graphics/gallery/knots/... The real challenge is tightening the knot because you don't want to stretch the spring and you don't want to crush it, so you have to do everything very gingerly. As you are going through the steps, the best hint I can give you is to keep the slack out of the knot at every stage, this keeps the springiness down, and keeps the bitter ends from backing out of the knots.

Once you have it tightened to your satisfaction, clip the extra wire sticking out. Then to finish it off roll the knot between your palms until it is round and the strands are uniform.

Good luck ...thanks for looking.