Supplies:
- 20 feet of 1/4″ or 5/16″ polyester rope
- Scissors
- Matches / Lighter
- Tape Measurer
1. Start tying simple knots at the following
measurement points. Measurements are from knot to knot and do not include the
actual knot. Make sure the knot will stay put, but isn’t too tight as you’ll be
coming back to slip the rope through them later.
2. Measure 10″ from your Tie Loop. Attach this
point to the left nose knot. Then go another 10″ and tie into the right nose
knot.
3. In order to do a tie into a knot, you
simply loosen the knot and follow the knotted rope around all the turns with
the new rope.
4. After the over the nose piece, things get a
little complicated. Measure out 30″ more of rope and arrange your ropes in the
following pattern so it makes sense. Tie the 30″ into the throat latch knot.
5. Measure 10″ and tie into the right cheek
knot.
6. Cut the extra rope to match the length of
the poll tie. Then use a match to burn your ends. Most rope halters have the
two strings separate. I burnt mine together for convenience.
7. Grab the throat latch and under-nose pieces
and tie a knot with a loop hanging from it. This loop is where you’ll attach
your lead rope.
8. At this point, you need to try the halter
on your horse. The measurements above are all generic horse sized and won’t
work perfectly for every horse. Once it’s on your horse, you can determine what
lengths need to change.
9. You can see how terribly this fit at this
point. I ended up lengthening the over-the-nose- ropes and shortening the
throat latch pieces. Much better:
OPTIONAL STEPS:
10. You can add some braiding to the nose-band
if you want to. Start with 3′ of rope. Find the middle and slip the rope
through one of the nose knots.
11. Loop the added rope behind the original
over-the-nose pieces. Then cross them as you bring them through the middle of
the original pieces.
12. Repeat the previous step continually until
you reach the knot on the other side of the over-the-nose pieces. Slip the
added rope through that knot and burn together to hold on place. The nose-band
will now look like this:
At this point, your rope halter is finished.
Make sure to tie it correctly when you put it
on your horse.
DISCLAIMER: Rope halters can exert a lot more
pressure than a normal halter. Do NOT turn a horse out or leave a horse tied
with a rope halter. The thinner your rope, the more pressure is exerted.
