A good friend of mine was recently tasked with building a coffin for another friend. The coffin was to be a simple, rustic pine box assembled with trunnels. It was to have rope handles instead of traditional metal or wooden ones. Since he had little time to work with, he made a quick SketchUp model of the coffin to show his friend. He wanted to show the rope handles and asked me how to model them. After I showed him how I’d do it, he suggested I make a video and do a blog post. So here it is.

There could be a number of other applications for this sort of thing. Twisted wire drawer pulls and rope molding come to mind.

There are a few extensions used in this process. The links to them are below.

TIG-Weld — There are other tools for welding edges and SketchUp 2021 has a native Weld Edges feature.

Bezier Spline — You could also use FredoSpline.

Helix Along Curve

Give it a try and see what you can come up with.

–Dave

If you’re interested in learning more about SketchUp, sign up for Dave Richards’ new online Foundations of Woodworking course here.

	Adding joinery details to a SketchUp model Components provide an efficient way to add joinery in SketchUp.
	Using textures in SketchUp Adding textures to your SketchUp models can help to give you a better idea of how the finished project might look.
	A few random SketchUp tips Dave Richards demonstrates some of the best practices he uses while working through a model.