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ParaCord Survival/Rescue Belt

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The project described on this page is relatively easy, yet produces a usable and effective survival/rescue belt. Besides that... it's not a bad looking belt either. You can get paracord in many colors. You can make these for a few bucks worth of materials and an hour or less of your time.

THE CONCEPT OF THE BELT

My Paracord Survival/Rescue Belt concept is based on extremely fast cord removal if needed. Here it’s shown with a simple buckle.

If you ever find yourself in need of a rescue line, you can get about 50 feet of line within seconds from this belt. The extremely rapid deployment is the key to this design. I like the idea of having this long emergency line anytime, anyplace and FAST!!! If someone falls through thin ice, you don’t want to make them wait while you carefully unweave an emergency lifeline. Simply pull off your belt, snap out your pocket knife, cut the end, and start pulling out cord. Para cord being 550 pounds tested tensile strength, it makes a GREAT emergency line!

TO USE THE BELT   -  

Note: My pictures show the belt very short so it'll fit on your screen!

Pull off the belt, snap out your pocket knife, and cut off the end of the belt… all you need to lop is the very end loops.

Now, simply start unraveling cord... it'll spool out as fast as you can pull it.

My cord length calculations are based on the size of paracord and a typical weave as shown. If the belt is about 2” wide and you’re weaving up and down through the horizontal lines, it will take about 2.5” of line to make one pass. You should get about 6 pass-through’s per inch of belt length. This gives a total of about 15 inches of line per inch of belt (that’s just the fast unraveling portion). A 40” belt length would therefore have at least 50 feet of fast deploying line!

Note: You'll also have several shorter section about 6 feet in length. these are the horizontal cords shown in the pictures. If you have the time to carefully unravel the whole thing, you can get about 75 feet of cord in a single line.

MAKING THE BELT

This belt is very simple to make. I recommend starting with at least 100 feet of cord (better too much than too little). Add at least 4 inches to your waist size. Example: If your jeans have a 32” waist, then make the belt 36” or more. Put the belt buckle in a vise, and tack a large nail in your workbench at the correct distance (length of belt).

Wrap at least 3 or 4 loops between these two (which makes 6 or 8 horizontal lines running through the belt). This will be up to you... how wide do you want it?

Weave the line back and forth between the horizontal strings (under one, over the next, etc). keep pushing this tight as you go. The more vertical pass through lines you have, the more emergency line you’ll have when needed.

When you reach the end, carefully slide the nail out, and then pass the cord through where the nail was. You can tie it off as shown, or to one of the end loops

 

The weave process is slow going when you first start because you’ll be pulling 50 feet of cord through on each pass. Don’t get discouraged… it gets faster and faster as you use up line!
 

OTHER USES

Belts, rifle/shotgun slings, bag or guitar straps, etc. The uses of a paracord strap are endless. These are a great way to carry a good amount of paracord in a tangle-free, readily deployable form. Good luck!