a couple of years ago I was surfing
around the internet and I came across a
really cool article about a small
company in Russia who would recycle
2-liter plastic bottles and turn them
into brooms crazy idea right they take
the plastic bottles and set them up into
a machine that they’ve created that
extracts small thin strands of plastic
rope which they then can bundle up and
turn them into heads of brooms this blew
my mind and ever since then I’ve wanted
to try for myself
now over the years I’ve seen a lot of
different tutorials pop up and a lot of
different inventions made on how to do
this very thing the problem is the cost
of the equipment and materials range
anywhere from about five to thirty
dollars the purpose of this video today
is to see if we can make plastic soda
bottle string at home by making a simple
little device that costs absolutely
nothing to make now the only materials
are going to need to make this work are
some kind of a knife a block of wood and
a saw and the only reason we’re using
this saw is to cut the block of wood if
you have some kind of knife like this
with the serrated teeth you might be
able to get away with just the knife and
the wood itself you can also make this
work with just a basic kitchen knife and
I’ll put that to the test for you a
little later on now to make my device
today I’m using a block of two by two
that I cut five inches long and you
don’t have to use the same thing you
could get away with a thicker tree
branch or any other kind of wood as well
now since I have a bench vise I am gonna
use that but that’s not required in any
case this is how it works
go ahead and clamp your piece of wood so
around an inch of the top is showing and
we’re gonna cut this with the grain you
can look down at the top of your piece
of wood and see which way the lines are
running and we’re gonna be cutting with
those lines with our block in place we
can begin cutting so grab your saw and
start cutting exactly down the middle
until we make a cut one inch deep once
the saw is bottomed out at one inch we
can turn the blade around and cut
horizontally until it cuts halfway
through the block from the front side
now all that’s left to do is take your
knife blade or something like a chisel
and position it halfway down the right
side of the block and give it a little
tap this will knock a little wedge out
of the bottom right corner and as easy
as that our machine is pretty much ready
for use the only thing left to do now is
add the blade now with this simple
system you can make a thickness of rope
just about as wide as you want but I’d
like mine to be on the thinner side so
I’m using the butt end of an eighth inch
drill bit as a guide place your spacer
down into the corner of the block and
then take the tip of your knife and push
it into the corner as well now move your
fingers out of the way and then ply a
little pressure to the tip of the knife
until it sinks into the wood once the
tip of your blade is in about half an
inch push the rest of your blade into
the side piece of wood until
grabs on holds firmly in place so update
guys our symbol machine is finished and
it’s completely ready to start making
plastic string and now there’s just one
small modification we need to make to
these bottles before they’re ready to
run through it now if you look down near
the bottoms of the bottles you’ll see
this little Ridgeline that we can use as
a guide for cutting it off we want to
make the smoothest cleanest cut possible
because that’ll give us the most plastic
string we can get bonus hack we get a
little plastic bowl out of it now if you
feel like you did a bit of a hack job
with the end of your bottle don’t feel
bad you can easily clean it up with a
pair of scissors alright guys the moment
of truth we’ve got our bottle prepped
and ready we’ve got our machine standing
by and all we have to do now is take the
bottom edge of our bottle feed it
through the gap of the wood and help it
make one full rotation perfect it’s
ready so I’ve helped the bottle do one
full rotation and what that’s done is
it’s cleaned up any jagged edges on the
bottom and you can see how on the back
here we’ve got a piece of string
sticking out now and if we give this
thing a tug you can see the bottle start
spinning giving us loads of extremely
strong and plastic strength so you can
see now it’s as easy as tugging on this
string and the whole bottle unwinds it
gives us a nice bundle of strong plastic
rope this is really about as thin as you
can get this stuff if you go any thinner
it’s gonna start breaking on you but
that is really thin I’m loving it use
that for fishing line now just for
convenience I turn this thing over
sideways because it relieves the
pressure on the bottle so it’s not
rubbing up on the knife it also allows
me to grab the string and pull it out at
a more comfortable angle so I can do
this all day
pretty sweet isn’t it just keeps going
and going and going now you might be
wondering what kind of uses there are
for plastic string and the answer is
probably as many uses as there are for
normal string you could use it as
improvised fishing line you could use it
to rig a snare or hold up your tent out
in the woods or if you used something
like my rope making machine you might be
able to wind it into an actual length of
rope now there really are so many ways
that you could approach this guys you
could use kitchen knives you could use
hunting knives you can use whittling
knives you can even use razor blades out
of your utility knife and just shove
that up in there as well and as far as
the thickness of the rope goods you can
make anything almost as thin as fishing
line to about as thick as any cable that
you’d want to make and for as thin as
this cord is it really is pretty strong
stuff of course you can break it but the
thicker you go much more difficult to
just break ah that’s as hard as I could
do it so would you look at that our
little homemade machine that cost
absolutely nothing to make is working
and it’s working very well so let’s move
on to all these plastic bottles and
transform them into string
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
sweet if you run your string in the line
across the room it’ll help it relieve
the tension and then if you wind it
around a water bottle it’ll organize it
into a neat little bundle
[Music]
[Music]
so update guys we recycled 12 2 litre
bottles and made nearly 1200 feet of
plastic string we did measure our
results and found that one 2-liter
bottle makes nearly 100 feet of eighth
inch plastic string by itself so it
looks like this idea works guys and it
works great using nothing but extremely
simple materials you can probably find
in the woods and definitely around your
house you can turn your old 2-liter
bottles into a piece of plastic cordage
and I have to give credit where credit’s
due the simplicity of this project came
from an idea I got from Creek Stuart in
his book survival hacks and I’ll put an
Amazon link to that down in the
description and as always thanks for
joining for this project I’ll be looking
for you the next one talk to you then
[Music]
around the internet and I came across a
really cool article about a small
company in Russia who would recycle
2-liter plastic bottles and turn them
into brooms crazy idea right they take
the plastic bottles and set them up into
a machine that they’ve created that
extracts small thin strands of plastic
rope which they then can bundle up and
turn them into heads of brooms this blew
my mind and ever since then I’ve wanted
to try for myself
now over the years I’ve seen a lot of
different tutorials pop up and a lot of
different inventions made on how to do
this very thing the problem is the cost
of the equipment and materials range
anywhere from about five to thirty
dollars the purpose of this video today
is to see if we can make plastic soda
bottle string at home by making a simple
little device that costs absolutely
nothing to make now the only materials
are going to need to make this work are
some kind of a knife a block of wood and
a saw and the only reason we’re using
this saw is to cut the block of wood if
you have some kind of knife like this
with the serrated teeth you might be
able to get away with just the knife and
the wood itself you can also make this
work with just a basic kitchen knife and
I’ll put that to the test for you a
little later on now to make my device
today I’m using a block of two by two
that I cut five inches long and you
don’t have to use the same thing you
could get away with a thicker tree
branch or any other kind of wood as well
now since I have a bench vise I am gonna
use that but that’s not required in any
case this is how it works
go ahead and clamp your piece of wood so
around an inch of the top is showing and
we’re gonna cut this with the grain you
can look down at the top of your piece
of wood and see which way the lines are
running and we’re gonna be cutting with
those lines with our block in place we
can begin cutting so grab your saw and
start cutting exactly down the middle
until we make a cut one inch deep once
the saw is bottomed out at one inch we
can turn the blade around and cut
horizontally until it cuts halfway
through the block from the front side
now all that’s left to do is take your
knife blade or something like a chisel
and position it halfway down the right
side of the block and give it a little
tap this will knock a little wedge out
of the bottom right corner and as easy
as that our machine is pretty much ready
for use the only thing left to do now is
add the blade now with this simple
system you can make a thickness of rope
just about as wide as you want but I’d
like mine to be on the thinner side so
I’m using the butt end of an eighth inch
drill bit as a guide place your spacer
down into the corner of the block and
then take the tip of your knife and push
it into the corner as well now move your
fingers out of the way and then ply a
little pressure to the tip of the knife
until it sinks into the wood once the
tip of your blade is in about half an
inch push the rest of your blade into
the side piece of wood until
grabs on holds firmly in place so update
guys our symbol machine is finished and
it’s completely ready to start making
plastic string and now there’s just one
small modification we need to make to
these bottles before they’re ready to
run through it now if you look down near
the bottoms of the bottles you’ll see
this little Ridgeline that we can use as
a guide for cutting it off we want to
make the smoothest cleanest cut possible
because that’ll give us the most plastic
string we can get bonus hack we get a
little plastic bowl out of it now if you
feel like you did a bit of a hack job
with the end of your bottle don’t feel
bad you can easily clean it up with a
pair of scissors alright guys the moment
of truth we’ve got our bottle prepped
and ready we’ve got our machine standing
by and all we have to do now is take the
bottom edge of our bottle feed it
through the gap of the wood and help it
make one full rotation perfect it’s
ready so I’ve helped the bottle do one
full rotation and what that’s done is
it’s cleaned up any jagged edges on the
bottom and you can see how on the back
here we’ve got a piece of string
sticking out now and if we give this
thing a tug you can see the bottle start
spinning giving us loads of extremely
strong and plastic strength so you can
see now it’s as easy as tugging on this
string and the whole bottle unwinds it
gives us a nice bundle of strong plastic
rope this is really about as thin as you
can get this stuff if you go any thinner
it’s gonna start breaking on you but
that is really thin I’m loving it use
that for fishing line now just for
convenience I turn this thing over
sideways because it relieves the
pressure on the bottle so it’s not
rubbing up on the knife it also allows
me to grab the string and pull it out at
a more comfortable angle so I can do
this all day
pretty sweet isn’t it just keeps going
and going and going now you might be
wondering what kind of uses there are
for plastic string and the answer is
probably as many uses as there are for
normal string you could use it as
improvised fishing line you could use it
to rig a snare or hold up your tent out
in the woods or if you used something
like my rope making machine you might be
able to wind it into an actual length of
rope now there really are so many ways
that you could approach this guys you
could use kitchen knives you could use
hunting knives you can use whittling
knives you can even use razor blades out
of your utility knife and just shove
that up in there as well and as far as
the thickness of the rope goods you can
make anything almost as thin as fishing
line to about as thick as any cable that
you’d want to make and for as thin as
this cord is it really is pretty strong
stuff of course you can break it but the
thicker you go much more difficult to
just break ah that’s as hard as I could
do it so would you look at that our
little homemade machine that cost
absolutely nothing to make is working
and it’s working very well so let’s move
on to all these plastic bottles and
transform them into string
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
sweet if you run your string in the line
across the room it’ll help it relieve
the tension and then if you wind it
around a water bottle it’ll organize it
into a neat little bundle
[Music]
[Music]
so update guys we recycled 12 2 litre
bottles and made nearly 1200 feet of
plastic string we did measure our
results and found that one 2-liter
bottle makes nearly 100 feet of eighth
inch plastic string by itself so it
looks like this idea works guys and it
works great using nothing but extremely
simple materials you can probably find
in the woods and definitely around your
house you can turn your old 2-liter
bottles into a piece of plastic cordage
and I have to give credit where credit’s
due the simplicity of this project came
from an idea I got from Creek Stuart in
his book survival hacks and I’ll put an
Amazon link to that down in the
description and as always thanks for
joining for this project I’ll be looking
for you the next one talk to you then
[Music]
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