Drying Pains and Jump Ropes

Sorry for not posting last Sunday. I didn't honestly have much for artwork to discuss or showcase for this week, unless it was on the backlog of projects that I'm trying to clear off.  For last week, I was assembling together a set of beaded jump ropes.  Having saved aside several beads from one of those wooden beaded car seat covers when its' plastic strings broke, I had finally decided on what to use those beads for.

As if counting the number of beads, natural and dark brown, wasn't a pain (there were 1,028 altogether by the way), I also had to drill-funnel each one of them to make their holes consistently the same size. That took a few days, along with a couple of power drill's battery recharges and several breaks for my sore hands (this was a while ago before I was working on the Halloween Decor; OK, ok, last time I'll talk about it until next year or when I make any progress on the scarecrow dolls).  Luckily I didn't need to coat any of them with polyurethane.

As you can see, I needed to keep count aside from memory.

After that prep-work, I've done a bit of division math to figure out a pattern for the beads. A ratio of 1:4 for all the beads and 1:5 for the main body of beads (e.g.-@00000-) excluding the pattern for the end sections. Since I don't know where I could get some cheap plastic cord/string, I decided on using jute crafting rope. The cut ends would be a pain to string all those beads so some clear scotch tape was wrapped around them like aglets, plus it kept them from unravelling. I didn't know how long the rope would need to be for stringing on all the beads; it surprisingly took over 70 feet of rope, providing I had to split up some of twine strands to make the rope fit thru the beads' holes and sewn & weave the connecting ends with sewing machine thread. With both the weight of all the beads and the exceeded length, it was decided to make 2 long jump ropes (both about 25 feet) and 1 single-user jump rope.

The pattern plan for the ends and main sections

Now what was left was the handles.  The best I had around were a couple of green painted natural bamboo poles. Natural bamboo grows like hallow column blocks, plus very resilient against bending/snapping so it was a good choice to use.  I needed to saw 6 pieces (fixed any peel-off splinters with glue later) and drill out the inner knot "walls" to make it possible for the rope to go thru. After doing that was painting polyurethane on them. I had some leftover Minmax Polyshades (Wood Stain + Polyurethane) from a past project with art stand displays, applying it onto the bamboo handles after sanding off the old paint and any other rough spots.
I goofed on one important step with it; even if the polyurethane had dried to the touch, it isn't solidly harden yet and I kept getting fingerprints and rope fibres imprinted on the handles' finish.  Polyurethane, depending on its thickness of the coating, usually takes hours for each coat (this time, about 8 hours) to fully dry and harden with little tackiness. Painstakingly annoying but that's the price for a good quality work. I fixed those goofs by sanding down the first coatings and repainted them, allowing them to fully dry this time.

My drying setup for the bamboo handles

So after the handles have been finished, I've just threaded the rope ends thru them and knotted both ends.  This was one of those projects to use up old materials though I did had to buy the ropes at Dollarama, not much more than $7. I'm thinking on what to do with them now, either gift them to someone or donate them; I already have my own jump ropes. With Christmas coming, that's one opportunity to do that.