Paracord Rosaries
A hobby that I have developed in the past couple of years is assembling durable rosaries from paracord and wooden beads.
At the moment I am only going to document my materials here but in the future I hope I build out this page into a tutorial as well.
One Rosary Summary
This summary describes my standard rosary:
- 6ft of paracord (core removed if using HomeDepot's multicam paracord)
- 53 10mm beads with 4mm holes
- 6 10-12mm metal beads with 4-5mm holes for the four mystery beads, the Pater Noster bead, and the Gloria bead
- 1 2-2.5inch Cruxifix
- 1 Saint medal
- 1 3mm metal ring to hold the Saint medal
Models
After some time experimenting and I have settled on a few favorites that seem to be popular amoung those who I have gives these to as gifts. Here I will describe them. I do not have any thoughtful names for these and generally the cruixifix and saint medals are not fixed to any model. The biggest differences between the models are the type of cord and beads.
Type 1
This type comes with multicam paracord and either light or dark coffee beads.
- Rosary cord: Home Depot's EverBilt Multicam Rope - 75ft @ $6
- Ave beads: 10mmx9mm wooden beads - 900pcs @$10
- Mystery beads: "Michael's metal beads"
Type 2
This type of rosary has a smaller cord (1-2mm) and usually a little extra room between the beads with more naturally colored wooden beads.
- Rosary cord: Black or Brown "Micro" paracord, sometimes labelled "90 cord" instead of "550 cord" with sizes between 1.18mm and 2mm.
- Ave beads: 10mm natuarally dyed beads
- Sometimes, I'll darken them with black shoe polish and gloss them with wax
- Mystery beads: "Michael's metal beads" or 8mm Acrylic Beads
- Bead Caps: 7mm with 4mm hole spacer beads
Other Types
I have experimented with many other combinations but have not formally specified any mostly because materials are not stable, expecially materals from Amazon.
You can look at the gallery to see other rosaries.
Some notes about materials...
