550lb paracord has long been renowned for its innumerable uses and survival functions, and has now found favour as a versatile crafting material. With a bit of practice and patience, you can make all sorts of stuff with it; pouches, dog collars, watch straps and necklaces, to name but a few. Perhaps the most popular accessory you can create from paracord is a bracelet, which can make for a nice finished product not just aesthetically, but also in terms of function. Wearing a paracord bracelet is a good way of ensuring you always have some useful cordage, literally close at hand.
Having been feeling a bit crafty recently, I had a go at weaving some paracord bracelets, and quickly found myself getting obsessed! I tried several different variations based on the classic ‘Cobra’ weave, and here’s a few of the bracelets that I ended up with:
King Cobra Paracord Bracelet
The ‘King Cobra’ is a natural continuation of the classic ‘Cobra’ weave pattern that’s commonly used in paracord bracelet manufacture. It creates a nice wide fitment and a really chunky looking bracelet, and of course means you’re carrying that much more cordage than a standard Cobra bracelet. My example here ended up using a good 16 feet of cord, while the normal Cobras for my wrist size would use just 8.5 feet.
‘Fisherman’ Survival Bracelet
With this bracelet I included a hidden compartment fashioned from black polyolefin heatshrink, which contains a mini survival fishing kit consisting of hooks, weights and swivels sealed in a length of plastic straw, and then wrapped in fishing line. After inserting the fishing kit and passing the two central cords of the Cobra weave through the heatshrink, then shrinking it with a lighter, I carried on the Cobra weave to completion. There are plenty of options for what you could include in one of these bracelets, and it’s certainly an idea that could be taken a lot further. A fully-featured bug-out survival bracelet can be made if you have the patience, and lots of small survival kit components to build into it.
Hex Nut Bracelet
The ‘tech’ look of this bracelet was achieved by threading ten M8 hex nuts onto the two central lines of the Cobra weave before commencing, and then weaving around the nuts. To continue the metallic theme of the bracelet, I switched out the usual plastic buckle in favour of an eleventh hex nut coupled to a D-shackle. The finished bracelet looks awesome, and on those very rare occasions when you find yourself needing M8 hex nuts, you’ll be glad you chose to wear this bracelet.
‘Mad Max’ Style Paracord Bracelet
My personal favourite of these bracelets is actually inspired by my favourite film of 2015, ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’. The film featured some brilliantly detailed imagery for such a fast-paced white-knuckle action fest. One of these little details was the paracord bracelet worn by ‘Mad’ Max Rockatansky (played by Tom Hardy) throughout the film, which is a customised version of a Cobra weave that doesn’t use a buckle, but instead uses the cord itself to tighten the bracelet around the wrist. The great thing about this bracelet is that you can always achieve a perfect comfort fit each time you put it on; simply pull it tighter until it’s just right.
If you haven’t tried making up a paracord bracelet before, give it a go! All you need to get going is some paracord, some buckles, a ruler, a lighter and some scissors. The Cobra weave is a good starting point, as I found, but there are plenty of other weaves and variations to try out. Crafting with paracord is one of those hobbies that’s very easy to get into, but has much depth and countless possibilities when you really get into it!
