How to Tie a Monkey Fist Doorstop

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Sean here! One of my “assignments” when I left for Maryland was that Morgan had seen a great idea to make a monkey fist knot doorstop. It’s a great idea for anywhere, but especially for any nautical-themed room in your house.

I’m an Eagle Scout, so I know a lot of knots, but I needed a refresher since it’s been a few years. I watched this video on YouTube which gave a great step-by-step.

I started out with about 15 feet of 3/4″ rope from Lowe’s. It was like $0.58 per foot so it was way cheaper than buying one of these doorstops online for anywhere between $25-50.

First, wrap the rope around your hand three times.

Then, wrap it around the other direction, starting with the loop on the bottom.

Then comes the tricky part. Now you have to thread the rope around the second set loops in the same direction as the first set up loops (I’d recommend watching the video here to really know where the rope needs to go).

The knot is going to be very loose if you did it right. At this point, if you really want to use this as a doorstop, you probably need some weight to it to hold the door open. So find a small round rock, and slide it into the knot in one of the gaps.

Now comes the next tricky part. You have to tighten the knot around the rock. You’re going to want to tighten using end you were using to wrap it. The original end you had wrapped around your hand is going to get longer, but that’s going to be good for making the handle later.

Tada!!! Now you have a tightened monkey fist doorstop!! But you’re going to have two ends of rope now. The short one, you’re going to want to cut off.

Now just loop the end of rope over and super glue it to another corner of rope and you have a handle!

How awesome is that? And it could totally hold open the automatically-closing door of my hotel room! It’s going to look great in the subtlety-nautical living room.

Ever made a monkey fist doorstop? Any other nautical projects?

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Sean

Hey there, I’m Sean, the woodworking enthusiast and builder behind CharlestonCrafted.com! Since 2012, I’ve been sharing the magic of turning raw materials into beautiful creations. I love teaching others the art and satisfaction of woodworking and DIY. I try to inspire fellow crafters to make something extraordinary out of nothing at all.