Inside Diameter
Cord Diameter
bights
leads
plys or strands (per lead)
calculate

If all your units are in <your favorite units here>, you need about units of cord (you can use millimeters, inches, feet or miles, there is no conversion, but this example makes more sense in inches)

Turks head is a knot.

Other sites can tell you how to tie it, this one just tells you about how much cord to start with, and if your planned knot can be tied. Other sites can do that too. Ashley has a chart, but the basic rule is leads and bights may have no common factor.

How I do it

To tie, I print out a "crossing chart"(page down on T.J. Bartruffs site for example), cut it to the right width for the number of bights, tape it into a tube, stuff it full of rags, and start pinning the cord down.

There is another turks head calculator on the web, but I couldn’t figure it out, so I wrote my own. Cord estimate is theoretical and approximate, according to my theories, which may be wrong. (but have been independantly verified) Use at your own risk. This is an estimate only. Don’t hold me responsible if you come up short.

A tip

To find the cord diameter without calipers or micrometers, wrap a piece of white thread around it several times, mark across the thread with a black marker, unwrap the thread, measure between marks with a ruler, then divide by pi.

Thanks for visiting

John Chambers