I have a friend who's daughter is a bit more tiny than most girls her age... and she was trying to jump-rope but the jump-rope was far too big for her tiny little self. Even if she could properly use it. So I made one for her! It was actually quite easy to make, if you have the proper tools. Check it out below in my video or you can read the step by step below.
Things You'll Need:
Wooden Dowel
Power Drill or Drill Press
Spade Bit (size dependent on how big your dowel / rope is)
Sandpaper
Circular Saw, handsaw, or jigsaw.
Small wire
Optional Items: String / Yarn, Needle, and Spraypaint.
Steps:
Figure out the length you'll need for your dowel and cut accordingly. This girl is tiny, so the handles I made were tiny to fit her little hands.
Cut your rope length accordingly to fit your babe's size. I made hers just slightly longer so that she can grow into it. Also add a few more inches to take in consideration the dowel length to feed into + knotting it off.
Take your Dowel and either use a drill or drill press. I don't have a drill press so I used a heavy duty clamp to hold it in place and used my power drill to drill a pilot hole into my dowel. This helps when drilling your even bigger hole into the dowel. The wider drill bit should be wide enough to pull your rope through. If you're unsure, take your rope, lay it against your drill bit. if you can see a little bit of the sides of your drill bit, it's the right size!! If you can't, go up a size until you find it. use a smaller sized drill bit to drill a hole first. You'll want to make a cross hair to get the center. If it's a bit off center, that's ok! imperfections are completely fine. :) Just as long as you drill straight down and not out the side of the dowel - Like I did my first time.
Drill this on both sides of the dowel so that you'll have one continuous hole. FYI, it may take a bit. There was a bunch of sawdust that got trapped inside that tiny hole so it took a while and a lot of banging to get the sawdust out. Also, using an even tinier drill bit to poke around in there helps to kind of push out the rest of the sawdust.
Take your Spade bit and drill at least 1" down. This will help with accommodating the knot you'll be tying to tie off your rope.
Sand all sides and all around the dowel.
Paint your dowel or keep it unfinished, or you can put some Danish Oil or any other finishing oil. I did Danish Oil and then taped it off and spray painted it.
After it's dry, feed your rope through the hole. I tied some wiring around the rope and fed it through the hole and pulled through. This really helped in feeding it through the dowel.
Tie off your rope and you're done.
**Please note that the links above are amazon affiliated links where if you purchase from these links I earn a small commission to help feed my 5 pets. Thank you from Bowie, Talia, Isey, Mustachio and Stripey - and they eat A LOT**
Comments