Kona Christmas Crafts Fair

Across every coastline, forest, desert, and island on Earth, humans have always turned to one humble but vital technology: natural-fiber cordage. Long before metal tools, engines, or electricity, twisted plant fibers held our world together—quite literally. Rope, cord, and sennit (plaited or braided fiber) are some of humanity’s oldest engineered materials, and every culture developed its own distinctive techniques using the resources at hand.

Early cordage was made from whatever local plants offered strength and flexibility: bark from linden trees in Europe, flax and hemp in the Mediterranean, papyrus along the Nile, coconut husk fibers (coir) throughout the Pacific, yucca and agave in the Americas, ramie and mulberry bast in East Asia. These fibers were gathered, retted, scraped, dried, and twisted into lines that powered daily life. With them people built shelters, secured tools, hauled water, launched canoes, navigated vast oceans, fished, hunted, traded, and performed ceremony.

Some of the world’s most iconic achievements depended on simple fiber rope. The stones of Egyptian pyramids were lifted and hauled with flax and palm rope. In the Andes, Inca engineers built entire suspension bridges—woven from braided grass—that lasted for centuries. Across Polynesia, expertly crafted coir sennit bound together voyaging canoes that crossed thousands of miles of open ocean. In Japan, sacred shimenawa ropes of rice straw marked holy spaces. In Europe, tarred hemp rigging powered the great Age of Sail.

Cordage wasn’t only practical—it carried meaning. Many cultures used intricately braided cords and knots in rituals, marriages, funerals, and leadership ceremonies. Sennit could signify rank, identity, or spiritual protection. The materials themselves were expressions of place: forest, mountain, wetland, or reef.

Today, synthetic ropes dominate industry, but natural fiber cordage still resonates. It’s renewable, biodegradable, and deeply tied to cultural heritage. For craftspeople, sailors, archaeologists, and anyone drawn to traditional skills, working with natural fiber is a link back to the hands of our ancestors. Every twist and braid tells a story of ingenuity, environment, and human connection.

In a world moving fast, natural cordage reminds us of the strength that comes from simple materials, patient hands, and generations of shared knowledge.

Knots & Marlinespike Work

 

 

 

 

A life-long love of knots and marlinespike ropework, for me, has been a fascinating gateway into the science, math, and engineering of knots and ropework, the incredible, creative beauty of historic decorative and functional marlinespike seamanship and the role it’s played in the history of civilization spanning many thousands of years.

Marlinespike seamanship or ropework is the art, science, and skillset spanning the use, maintenance, and repair of rope, including knotting, splicing, lashing, whipping, and storage.

While the skill of a sailor in the Age of Sail was often judged by their knowledge of marlinespike seamanship, the incorporated knowledge and understanding required for docking a craft, securing loads, hoisting, towing, and making repairs while underway is still critical for modern seafarers. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

         a 100+ year old marline spike that was once my grandfather’s

 

 

 

 

 

A Marlinespike is a tapered, conical tool long used in marine ropework. The marlinespike’s name is derived from marline, the thin but strong, waxed line of two-twisted strands used to “marl,” or wind around the ends of larger rope with a hitch at each turn, to seize or form a protective whipping to prevent unraveling or fraying. In centuries past, to keep this thin but essential line from rotting when exposed to seawater, it was not waxed but tarred. The only way to loosen the tarred marline from a rope was to pick the marline free with a spike which was also used as a handle when marling or whipping to tighten the hitch at each turn. Thus the spike became known as the “marling spike” or in seafaring usage, a marlinespike.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The art, science, and skill set of knotting and ropework is one of humanity’s oldest, stretching back thousands of years, well before the ancient Egyptians. However, commercial shipping has always employed a minimal crew with very little discretionary time, so it wasn’t until the advent of large maritime navies and particularly the practice of whaling, both of which needed a surge capacity of crew not just to “sail the ship,” but to “fight the ship” or process a whale, that crew had the intermittent “free time” to develop the beautifully intricate decorative knotting that marlinespike seamanship came to be known for over the last two centuries.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With the advent of wire cable, the marlinespike has come to refer to a spike made of iron or steel, which could open a wire cable for splicing and a similar spike made of wood, bone, or ivory is called a fid.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Living in the middle of the Pacific, with its long history of whaling, I for years assumed the marlinespike was named for the marlin, swordfish, or billfish of the same name, from whose “sword” a good marlinespike or fid can be fashioned. My marlin sword bill was given to me by a friend, Dr. Andrew West, a marine biologist and one of the world’s foremost authorities on marlin. But I had assumed wrong, as the term marlinespike was used by seamen long, long before, and the giant billfish was named for its resemblance to the tool most sailors commonly used.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A fid is usually made of wood, bone, or ivory and is used to hold open knots and holes in canvas and to separate the “lays” (or strands) of synthetic or natural rope for splicing. It adds a jamming cleat to pull a cord back through the cord split by the fid’s point.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Modern fids are typically made of aluminum or plastic, but historically they were made of the hardest, densest wood known at the time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

In addition to holding rope open to assist in the creation of a rope splice, modern push fids have markings for precise measurements in a variety of sizes of rope. The length of these fids is typically 21 or 22 times the diameter of the rope to be spliced. A half-inch diameter rope would have any accompanying fid 10.5–11″ in length with hash marks denoting the long and short fid measurements. A short fid is ¹⁄₃ a fid length and a long fid is ²⁄₃ the overall fid length.

 

 

 

 

 

The Marlinspike is used in such tasks as unlaying rope for splicing, untying knots, drawing marline tight using a marlinspike hitch, and as a toggle joining ropes under tension in a belaying pin splice.

 

 

 

 

 

Most marlinspikes are 6–12 inches (15–30 cm) long but may reach 2 feet (61 cm) and more for working heavy cables and ropes. They are usually made from iron or steel, whereas fids, similar in shape and function, are formed from wood, bone, or ivory. Both could be used as an improvised weapon to repel hostile boarding parties. Small marlinspikes were eventually included as a tool on many sailing-related pocket knives. Sailors who become proficient at knot tying, splicing, and sewing using the marlinspike are said to have mastered marlinespike seamanship. ¹

 

 

 

 

 

 

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^{1. Webster’s New World College Dictionary, 4th Edition. Copyright © 2010 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.}