A model railroad hobby colleague who is also an avid model ship builder recently described his experiences with a device called a "ropewalk". A ropewalk is what is used to create rope, of all sizes. My friend had purchased a neat little device from Syren Ship Model Company. syrenshipmodelcompany.com/ropewalk.php
After watching Syren's YouTube videos as well as many other such videos I became intrigued and had some design ideas which I felt would improve on the designs I saw.
The Syren ropewalk design is superior to many in that it makes use of a "headstock" that twists the strands of rope and a separate "tailstock" which is placed at the other end of the workbench and consists of a simple rotor that rotates the twisted strands around each other. My idea was to incorporate both of these functions into one device, requiring only a simple pulley and weight system to be located at the other end of the rope.
Rather than showing a series of still pictures I have created a 5-minute video that describes the design and construction of this project and shows the device in action: