Excellent story, Frank. I too remember standing behing structure awaiting messenger lines during unrep when I was serving in Uncle Sams' yacht club. Of course they were dangerous, but you needed to have some weight on the messenger to toss a line as far as it had to go.
Getting back to the "Ball of String". The first real Turks Head I ever tied, under the watchful eye of my Grandpa,
was a fid. It started as a nail, and I tied a 3Lead x 4Bight TH around the head of the nail. This was followed by a 4L x 5B TH, and then a 5L x 6B TH. This brought the head of the nail up to a size I could then use as a fid. I have also used a Figure of 8 knot as the core of this kind of project. Edward, if this is what you are thinking of for your project, you are going to need a large fid. It wouldn't hurt to have some large needle nose pliers around, also. I can help with templates for a succession of larger Turks Heads, or you can tie a succession of Monkey Fist knots where each one has more turns on each loop than the previous layer.
Pat
