Obey the rope

A friend of mine with a nice boat asked me to make her this rope mat to keep the kayak from scratching the paint where it rests. I had never made one before, and I wanted to learn how. Mats like this are worked loosely and then tightened up. I decided I would make short work of it and only tighten it twice. Silly me. It was so tight the strands overlapped, and the more I tried to loosen it, the tighter it got. I had to take the whole thing completely apart, which is about as hard as putting it together. I realized I had to do what the rope wanted me to do. There is no other way to make these things. It takes about twenty minutes to adjust the whole thing, and I adjusted it about a dozen times to get it looking like this. I made a nice splice on the back and cut the ends off with a heat tool. I was wary of ruining the thing so I made a "kringle" out of the leftover rope and practiced the splice on it first. I used about 100 feet of rope for the two mats.