Paracord Belt With Carabiner Buckle

(More of on this and other belt/buckle designs at http://mobiobione.wordpress.com/paracord-belt-carabiner-buckle-3-0-and-3-1/)

This is what you end up with - A one and three quarter inch wide paracord belt with a removable 3000lb carabiner at one end and a 2500lb triangle D-ring at the other. The webbing should be good for around 7000lb, with the seven down and back runs. The whole belt comes apart with a quick undo of the knot hidden behind the D-ring, giving you just over 100' of paracord.

The first pic is most of what you need to make one, more or less, including the table, or a board, or something to but the clamps on.

Oval carabiners seem to work well, the second pic is a 4"X2" 18kN Black Diamond. The cross-pin is made from 3/16" steel rod from any hardware store, etc. This one was bent around a half inch bolt in a bench-mounted vice.

Pic three is my setup. The belt will shrink from the initial length as you make it. This one is 53.5", which shrinks down to 44".  The carabiner is initially tied tight to the clamp at this end, as it seems easier to set up that way. Once you get going, replace the tie with a bungie cord, so the belt can shorten as it wants to.  The whole idea is to pack as many crossing runs into your length as possible, and having the bungie mounted end will help with that.

Next you can see here the cord run up from the spool on the floor, back and forth 7 times, then tied at the top of the carabiner. Be sure to get your cross-pin in the right spot here.

The weave is done by crossing the runs between each other, front one to the back and back ones to the front,  using the pen, or rod or whatever you have (maybe better pictures on my other page, http://mobiobione.wordpress.com/emergency-weave-paracord-rescue-belt-by-obi/ ) then running a loop up through them and leaving the top of that loop for the next loop to go through. About this far along if you switch to the bungie, it will allow the belt to shorten, while holding it in place to work on.  You'll probably need to check almost every time to be sure your lines don't get crossed at the end you're not working on. I did one for my son initially trying to do it flat on the table with only one end secured, and it didn't go so well, so I went back to this.



I started out using whatever I had handy, which was this pen body, and then this extra cross-pin. I tried other stuff, but the square end on the pen coupled with it's hollow body(which allows a loop of cord to be fed into it and then pulled through, handy for the tight ones as you near the end), and the little hook on the cross-pin actually made for a good set of tool for this. Something my old friend Captain Danimal Dan would call "Accidental Excellence".

The last one is tricky to get through. I used the hook to work down from the top, then stuck the pen onto it, and worked it back through, then put a loop of cord into the pen and pulled it through.

Now you go back and tighten up the slack in the crossings,

and as this D-ring is a little wider than my carabiner, I took the free end and wove it, kinda figure-8 through the D-Ring until the extra space was filled, finishing off by feeding the end behind the loops of cord on the D-ring.

I fed a single line of inner strand around the ends so I can take the carabiner out and not have everything fall apart.

There you go! Style and function, all in one handy 48", multi-thousand pound tow strap, that you can rappel down a cliff if you need to. Nothing gets better than that...accept maybe another coffee...

Oh, I added a mini Nitize S-biner to the side to hold the D-ring in place. Just thread some gutted cord through however makes sense.