Forums > Technical Discussion > Making monkey fists

Posted: 26th Aug 2004
You can buy wooden 'balls' at various crafty type stories I believe, screw an eyebolt in, or drill and run one all the way through if you want to.

Theres a couple different ways to tie a monkeys fist, which way you goin for?

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Posted: 26th Aug 2004
I only knew about the way that they show here on HoP. Is there anywhere that shows how to tie them the other way?

Also, wouldn't a wooden core burn and collapse?
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Posted: 26th Aug 2004
Kevlar is an excellent insulator, the wood will last as long or longer than the kevlar on the outside. I have not found a limit to too big but I may need an elaboration to cooking your arms. I don't think it's possible to make monkeys fist too big ... but that's my opinion.

Cody Canon
Controlled Burn, Reno Nevada

Posted: 26th Aug 2004
Say if I used 1 inch or half inch rope and did about 5-8 coils instead of the 4 that the clip shows on HoP, would that work? I like big flames.

Posted: 26th Aug 2004
Your best bet is to increase the diameter of the rope and stick to the 4 coils. When you add extra coils the monkeys fist knot warps and does stange things. The monkeys fist knot is a puzzle. Get some cheap practice rope and play with the knot before you buy kevlar. That way you know what your getting in to.

If you like big fire, the monkeys fist may limit you. Look in my gallery at some of my props. They'll give you some ideas

Cody Canon
Controlled Burn, Reno Nevada

Posted: 26th Aug 2004
Thanks for your help. Those props look, erm, threatening
I'm wondering whether to go all out for the 1 inch rope or instead the 1/2 inch. I've only been twirling for about a month now but I'm lighting up quite often and just feel I want to move on from the tube core. Does anyone here use the 1 inch rope?

Posted: 26th Aug 2004
If you want to move from tubecore wicks you might want to try cathedral wicks. Much easier to make and it's easier to make them big if you want to.

Cody Canon
Controlled Burn, Reno Nevada

Posted: 26th Aug 2004
I might do that, would 10 feet on each head be a nice big size?

Posted: 26th Aug 2004
1" rope, IMO, is seriously too thick for making a good monkey's fist knot. The best I have found (in terms of thickness), is 3/8" rope or *possibly* 1/2". But that's the threshold between making a good knot and a horrible one. Also, something you might want to check out is Flamma Aeterna's design for monkeyfist knots, they use a design where the rope itself is the core, and the whole knot can soak up fuel. Long burn times in my usage. Here's the link to the design: https://www.flammaaeterna.com/fire/firetutMF.htm

Good luck!

Posted: 26th Aug 2004
You can tie a monkeys fist as shown on HoP or as a Turks Head

Differences between the two aren't much more than looks, you can double up a turks head by running the tail through again. Dressing the knot is going to be the hardest part if you arent used to ropework. remember to work through the knot multiple times, starting at one end and following it clear though and starting over making it tighter and tighter gradually each time. I'd also stay away from the 1" rope

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Posted: 27th Aug 2004
1" thick rope would be difficult to work with and result in an impractically large wick.

For cathedrals, it depends on the thickness of the wicking you use. Mostly you'll find 1/8" or 1/16"; with 10 feet of 1/8" wicking, you'd have a huge wick; with 1/16", it would merely be large. I use 4' of 1/8"x2" wicking per wick in my wicks, and most folks consider them to be a little on the large side.

Laugh while you can, monkey-boy

Posted: 27th Aug 2004
i spent ages looking for wooden balls in useless bloody craft shops. either do one knot inside t'other or buy a set from HOP like i did... seeing as you have to buy more rope than you need anyway it's not a bad option!

It is our fantasies that make us real. Without our fantasies we're just a blank monkey' - Terry Pratchett

Posted: 27th Aug 2004
I guess huge is a relative term. Work your way up. I know your eager to use more fire, but you should pace yourself. My wicks are 6 feet each of 4" by 1/8" and they are huge, but I have been doing this for six years and have worked my way up.

Off to burningman so I won't be in touch till september 7th.
Good Luck all

Cody Canon
Controlled Burn, Reno Nevada

Posted: 28th Aug 2004
Thanks for all your help. I've made some very small cathedrals which I'm going to test out tonight but when I have the money, I'll make 6 feet cathedrals, that is if I can find eyebolts long enough!

Posted: 28th Aug 2004
If you want the design to be mostly wick (to give you a better approximation of fuel consumption and whatnot) then I highly reccommend Adam Rice's method of making a cathedral wick. It uses wire rope to go through the center, but granted it is all really your choice. But damn.. 6' of wicking on cathedrals. I would like to see that someday.

Posted: 6th Sep 2004
I've just made a couple of pairs of monkey fists for a mate (I don't do poi), and I made the centres by tying a figure 8 knot, then adding one more overhand (half hitch) to it to make a bigger lump. This seems to be about the right size for a 3 or 4 bight monkey's fist. If you want bigger heads, I'd suggest doing a 2 bight monkey and then wrapping that in a 4 or 5 bight one. The thicker rope is unlikely to give you a nice head - this was with 1/2" rope, and that's a nice size to work with.

Good luck!

monkeys ate my brain

Posted: 22nd Sep 2004

Written by: Cody

---

I guess huge is a relative term. Work your way up. I know your eager to use more fire, but you should pace yourself. My wicks are 6 feet each of 4" by 1/8" and they are huge, but I have been doing this for six years and have worked my way up.

Off to burningman so I won't be in touch till september 7th.
Good Luck all

---

Well, I made my cathedrals (about 4' of 1/8" x 2") and they're very good, so much more brighter than my 4 inch tubecores.

I'm now gonna try 4' of 1/8" by 4". How long do you reckon my eyebolts would need to be? I've bought a couple of 4.5" long ones (not including the eye) and I hope they'll do.

Posted: 22nd Sep 2004
As mentioned above Adam Rice's method for making wicks really has it all over the eye bolt way. Because you use cable instead of bolts all of the weight of the heads is from wick, not metal, so you can work into much larger wicks straight off the bat without overburdening yourself.



As of this week I have made about 10 individual wicks that way and I love them all. My only alterations to his design are that I forego the brass tubing and just thread the cable straight through the kevlar. I use store bought swages to close the cable, and I use a quick link as an attachment point instead of a cable loop.

A pic of the wicks I made just this week is here. The largest are 4 feet of 2x1/8th kevlar and the doubles are 3 feet and 2 feet of the same kevlar type.



One thing you might consider about using 4 inch wick instead of the usual 2 or 2&1/2 inch stuff is that the larger profile of the wicks is going to make them more likely to tangle, bang together, and degrade at the edges. You'd probably be far better off performance wise using a gargantumundous amount of approx 2 inch wick and making some shorter chains.



What I want to try next is somthing like Flammaeterna's Moonblaze poi design. From the look of it they should hold much more fuel and wear better then the typical cathedral design. Have a look at these monsters by the same company. They're psychotic, but somthing like that would handle more like the 4 foot x2 inch wicks then wicks made with 4 inch wicking.

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Posted: 22nd Sep 2004
yeehaw!!! now that's what I'm talkin about That looks like a pair of ropes I made, each rope weighed 6-7 pounds fully soaked. Enough fire so they almost looked like fire flags when spinning. Ah, the donkey d**ks, I do miss those

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Posted: 23rd Sep 2004
Using 4" wide wicking for poi wicks is kind of crazy. Using 4' of it will result in pancake-like wicks. I'd recommend using a narrower width and longer length to keep things more nearly cubical, unless there's a particular effect you're going for.

The way I approach the design of a cathedral wick is to look at total square inches of wicking and the number of folds. With 1/8"-thick wicking, the length required for each strip is approximately:
number of folds x (width of wicking + 0.4")
My normal wicks wind up being 10 folds tall. If you are using 2' strips of 4" wicking, you can back-figure that you'll wind up with 5 folds and some change. They'll also be 196 square inches of wicking each, which will be very heavy. I've used wicks that displace about the same amount, and find that they're a real handful. My current personal wicks displace 145, and most people consider them pretty big.

Laugh while you can, monkey-boy

Posted: 18th Sep 2005
WARNING THREAD BEING HIJACKED!!!!

lol sorry but i seem to keep doing this.

ok i was wasting to make a rope meteor, not for fire, just a rope meteor (maybe with some tails if i get inventive) the questions are

1) monkeyfists for the ends sound good but how would i tie them

2) if not monkeyfists then what??

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Posted: 18th Sep 2005
Erm, tie them like a monkey's fist? Just follow the directions in the HoP article, with a rubber ball or something in the middle. Or nothing in the middle, that works too, but I don't know if you'll get the right weight with just the knot.



I've a question of my own, if you make knot wicks without a wooden core, how do you attach them to the chain?



EDIT: nevermind, it's totally on that link posted earlier on this page, silly me I should read these things before asking questions.
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