Rattlesnake Neckerchief Slide

Recently, when I was leading a Cub Scout BALOO training course here in Garland, I needed something for us to do as a gathering activity while every one was arriving in the morning. I wanted to do something that they could take back to their den meetings, so I settled on this slide design. It's easy enough that a Tiger cub can make it with a bit of adult help and it looks good enough that Webelos and Scouts will want to wear it.

    1. Start with a 12 inch by 3/4 inch piece of suede leather or faux leather material (which is much less expensive if you need to make a lot of these)

2. Using a very sharp knife or razor blade round the corners of one side of the strip of leather and split the leather into three 1/4 inch strips up to about 1 inch from one end. Do these first two steps before your meeting to save time.




3.  Begin weaving the three strands together. Make sure to fold over the strands as you weave them to give the snake body a more three dimensional look. Hopefully, these pictures show what I mean.

4. Continue weaving until you are three inches from the end of the leather. Wrap one of the strands around the others two or three times and hot glue in place.

5. Trim off the excess leather from the strip you wrapped around the snake. Using scissors or a razor, trim the ends of the remaining two strands down to 1/8 inch in thickness. If you don't, they will be too thick to put beads on.

6. String three pony beads onto the two leather strands and secure the last one in place with a small drop of hot glue. Trim off the leather strands so that they extend about 3/4 inch past the beads. Keep one of the pieces you trim off for later use.

7. Using a leather punch, cut two eyes in the snake's face. split the end of the saved piece of tail leather to create a forked tongue and hot glue it to the underside of the snake's head.

8. Loop the snake to create about a one inch diamter slide and hot glue together. You are finished!  I hope you and your Cub Scouts have fun making this slide. Please let me know how it works out or any improvements you make.