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Cord Farsteners

A project log for Super sandals

Hacked sandals for running fast & long.

lion-mclionheadlion mclionhead 06/18/2018 at 05:350 Comments




If money was unlimited, the lion kingdom would have already bought every cord farstener in the world, but instead, it took a few months to finally discover them.  There are a few problems.  The easiest ones are at your local REI in the form of orange & black cord locks.  The orange ones have holes 7.5mm across.  The black ones have holes 8mm across.  The orange ones have softer springs than the black ones, but are the smallest of all of them.  Amazon.com has similar farsteners in the form of the mighty K238, after a much longer wait.  

The lion kingdom also had a 9mm holed one from a backpack & a 6mm holed one from a 1980's sleeping bag. The 1980's one had the strongest spring & represented the very 1st generation of cord locks.  None are big enough to farsten bundles of 5/32" paracords, but the 8mm can farsten bundles of 6 1/8" nylon strings.  The 7.5mm ones can only farsten 5 1/8" strings.

Fortunately, the 1/8" string bundles were the easiest on lion skin.  They only didn't work with square knots.  The polyolefin craft cord was much too abrasive.  Suspect what works is larger bundles of loosely packed string.  The key is to pass a single bundle of string around the paw instead of passing a single string multiple times around the paw, so it can be adjusted.

The easiest string on lion paws.










It came with a handy knot guide.

Your biggest ally in this part of the adventure is the clamp.  The 6 heel strands can't be installed without it.




The toe strap used 20" of double bundle with a bowline for the toe plug.  The heel strap used 34" of triple bundle.  6 heel strings went through a black farstener.  3 heel strings + 2 toe strings went through an orange farstener.

They worked quite well, after 7 miles.  3 were fast.  They made slight adjustments as easy as dialing it in.  Though they couldn't get as tight as knots, they didn't experience any perceptible loosening. 

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