Gigantic Halloween Spider Web

This web was made for under $20 and it's entirely woven out of common clothesline style rope. It's about 20 feet high and maybe 12 feet along the base. It's easy to make; it only take a little time. I think it took me about four hours but the results are totally worth it. I've gotten lots of great comments about it.

Step 1: Materials

Only three materials are required.

• Rope - I used five 100' lengths. This inexpensive rope is sometimes marked as intended for clotheslines. I cut two of them into 25' lenghts for the perimeter and the three cross ropes. At Walmart the other day I saw 100' lengths of rope for something like $2.64 each. <UPDATE: Harbor Freight sells clothesline for $2.99, item #66565.> If your web is truly humongous (awesome!) you might need more rope.
• Rebar - Two 2 foot pieces of 3/8 inch rebar. I got it at Home Depot for under a dollar each. I bent the end into a hook with my vice to make it easier to attach the rope.
• Eyebolt - Just a simple eyebolt. The one I had on hand was pretty heavy duty, maybe 4 inches long. I forget what I paid for it at Home Depot years ago but surely it's under $5.

Comments

[tinker234]

wow now just need to make a spider

[nolte919]

Oh! After replying to your comment I decided to add a picture of the spider as an additional step but I've already done just that. See step 6.

[nolte919]

Great suggestion. We've actually made a spider for it that we've used the last couple of years. The head and body is black fabric covered styrofoam balls with black legs. There is a red hourglass on her back (yes, I know, wrong side) and I wire it onto the web because we get some ridiculous winds around here.

[crapflinger]

i'll be doing this next year. don't have enough time (or a tall enough ladder) for this year.

[gladreal]

Hi,

thanks for the inspiration. We made a similar one yesterday, I supported it between 2 trees in the yard and used tent stakes to stretch out the support strands to the ground. And since I had thick yarn, we used that instead, and it seems to be quite sturdy, though I'll probably not be able to save it for next year.
I am working on a small wrapped body to hang from it (well, actually from a branch as I don't think the web will support any real weight), possibly with furry feet, a la 'hobbit'.

[jbensch]

Thank you for your instructable! The kids and I did one over the weekend. 250' of sash cord and 2 hours later we had ourselves the envy of the neighborhood.

[matthewabel]

I want to make a big ol' spiderweb for halloween. So, I said "Surely there is an Instructable for this." And there is!

This is an awesome guide, too. I greatly appreciate the time you took linking to the right knots and updating us on rope to use. I'll try to remember to post mine when it's done.

[nolte919]

Why thank you! Knowledge of a few useful knots comes in handy all the time. I just added another step (8) if you're interested. I would LOVE to see a picture of yours.

[Gunnar120]

I have an Idea that I will probably never try (BUT THAT DOESEN'T MEAN YOU DONT HAVE TO!) maybe use heavy-duty rope and tie between three trees using hammock gear for a SPIDEY HAMMOCK!!! Nice idea huh?

[tictaclad]

 when i saw this thats exactly what i thought of! great minds think alike lol

[cheezemonkey]

 It could be just me, but i had a bit of trouble getting the rebar to stay in the ground. So instead i picked up a couple tree stakes (about $1.50 each) which worked really well.

[bloomautomatic]

Nice work. I'd love to do something like this over my yard between the house and the garage...but I know I won't get to it before halloween. I wouldn't be surprised if some neighborhood teenager hooligan tries to climb it one night. Vince

[OnePrettyThing]

Very cool! I love Halloween projects with big impact, I'll be linking to this.

[ddrocketman]

Well if you really didn't want to disassemble it, I guess you could superglue where all the strings intersect, and to solve the tangling lay it on some large tarp or something and roll it up with that. It looks pretty huge though so I'm sure you'd have to do a tiny bit of folding first. However I guess if you saved it this way it would probably take up a lot of storage space as well. Anyways, the web awesome! Great Job!

[cowscankill]

Very nice and big!

[l8nite]

tripple AAA+ If I find a spare evening I may incorporate this into this yrs haunted house. One thing I noticed, you described how to tie a truckers hitch (very useful knot) but not a clove hitch