About The Rope Doctor

The Rope Doctor is dedicated to producing only the highest quality, most authentic, traditional and modern day nautical rope items.   

     My name is Donald Allen. I grew up in the small town of Aylmer, Ontario, Canada (nowhere near the Ocean).
 
     My interest in knots began in the summer of 1994 when at the age of 19, I moved from Aylmer, Ontario to Tofino, British Columbia, Canada. Tofino is a nautical little coastal community located on the west coast of Vancouver Island. Many of the businesses, homes and boats in Tofino are adorned with bits of fancy knot work. This fancy knot work appealed to me but I did not think much of it.

      It was in late fall/early winter of 1995 that I started working on an oyster farm where I was introduced to my first two knots, the clove hitch and bowline. These are two of the simplest and most practical of all the knots. Learning these knots made working with boats and ropes much easier. Knowing this, it occurred to me that there were many other knots that would make my job easier yet. Seeing as I had access to miles of rope and that I was going to be working with it on a daily basis, I figured that I might as well learn how to use it properly.
 
     I began observing the knot work on the boats and businesses in the area. There were a few places in particular that had some particularly fancy knot work on them. I found out who the owners were and asked them to share their knowledge. They all suggested the same thing. Go out and buy yourself a good book about knots. I soon found out that there were a lot of good books. More so, I discovered that there were a lot of knots and so my studies began.
 
     At about the same time that I began studying, I recalled a few fancy rope doormats that I saw. I desired to learn how to make some for myself. Just about any knot book out there will contain at least one very basic rope doormat design but most do not go into any great detail about how to make then. I had to figure this out for myself. I soon made myself two simple, blue polypropylene rope doormats. One for my cabin and one for my boat.

     It was in the late summer/early fall of 2003 that my partner suggested that we make some rope doormats and try to sell them at the local Tofino and Ucluelet markets. We tried a few very small and simple designs. The response was overwhelming. We then decided to buy some 'real' rope and make some 'real' mats. We bought about 250' of 1/2" Manila rope, cut it in half and made two simple rope doormats. We sold the two mats and used the money to buy 500' of rope. We cut it into four piece and used it to make four mats. We sold these and used the money to buy 1000' of rope etc...

     Our work soon got noticed and people started suggesting that we take our knots to the 'big shows' in the 'big cities'. We spent the next few years attending events like Filberg Festival in Comox, Circle Craft in Vancouver, Out of Hand in Victoria, BC Home and Garden Show in Vancouver, The Vancouver international Boat, and Tall Ships and Wooden Boat Festivals to name a few.
    
     For the first three or so years we only carried about 10 very basic/traditional designs that we learned from books. It was in August of 2006 that was inspired by the Celtic style knot work of a fellow knot tier. He taught me how to incorporate the Celtic element into the simple traditional designs. It was in February of 2007 that I actually created my very first, own original, modern day, Celtic style, endless knot, doormat design. Since then I have created hundreds of designs.

     I feel that my single greatest knotting accomplishment is the creation of my circular designs. All of my circular designs are based upon two traditional circular design. The first being to sailors thump mat, which to my knowledge has never been expanded beyond it's original size / design. The second is what I call the 24 bight, six pointed star / rosette center to 18 loops flat Turk's-head. More to come.......