I teach 10 practical knots and Paracord basics at various local events and festivals throughout the spring, summer and autumn, and during the winter months I often lead macrame and paracord sessions in several local residential homes and at community and wellbeing sessions.
I thought it would be nice and make me look more professional if had a portable knot board to display.
I teach with black and white cords so that there is a visible contrast between left & right and standing & working ends and I would like to use this concept on the board.
The ten knots I teach will be included on the boards along with a standard whipping, back splice, eye splice, short joining splice and a small selection of stopper knots. I would also like to display some basic Paracord work including Cobra weave, Solomon weave, Dragons eye weave, Fishscale weave, Chain link weave, monkey’s fist and a few different types of zip pullers.
I’ll be using a plywood board because of its durability and versatility along with portability. However, I would like to know what would be best way to fix the knotted cords to the boards?
If the standing end(s) can be left longish (not too long) and the cord/rope to be semi-permanent, I would consider hot melt glue. It could allow the item to be rotated to view the unseen side, and would allow the knot, etc. to be removed if there becomes a reason.
You could put a rope border and fancy carrying handle on the board as well.
At the moment I am considering utilising a 4ft x 2ft piece of plywood for the display knot board. Basically because this is a convenient size for me or my wife to handle, which also matches the modular size of my fete and gala games and slot together plywood flat pack for storage picnic tables.
Alas, due to an ongoing major insurance claim my wife and I had to move into temporary accommodation while the extensive repairs to our house are undertaken. Unfortunately this means all of our stuff has gone into storage and I am currently not in the position to make my portable events & festival knot display board in time for this year’s season. We are scheduled to move back into our house in mid July: it was supposed to be today 02/06/26 after being in this apartment for 3 months since moving out of our house on the 27/02/26.
The good news is that I keep all of my jigged paracord teaching boards in a garden shed and that I took the vast majority of my cords and tools with me to this flat and I can begin my festival season this week as scheduled.
First of all, thank you for sharing your project. I think it’s a great idea, and I really like the fact that you teach practical knots to people at events and festivals. I hope everything goes well with the repairs to your home and that you’ll soon be back in your own workshop.
I had a different idea that might be worth considering.
One idea that came to mind is using small pieces of self-adhesive Velcro.
I would glue one piece to the plywood and the matching piece to the back of the rope sample using either hot glue or a strong adhesive such as cyanoacrylate.
This way, the knots would stay securely attached to the display board, but they could also be removed in seconds whenever you want to show them more closely.
In my experience, students are usually curious and like to hold the knots in their hands, examine them from every angle, and better understand their construction. With a Velcro system, the knots could easily be removed for demonstrations and then placed back on the board without damaging either the display or the rope.
It could also make replacing or rearranging the knots much easier in the future.
Riffing on Appolari’s idea would be to use either cup hooks (high trust, easy to remove) or screw eyes (can see all angles, hard to remove) on the board. The knots/weaves could then be hooked to the cup hooks or tied to the screw eyes or tied to a keychain finding (quick release or spiral ring).
For my display pieces when I was exhibiting, I just used t-pins to hold down most knots. For the teaching knot board I created, I nailed the knots down (but that doesn’t let you see the other side)
