@Triple9Nickel

Worked my whole life in an environment where ropes are of daily use to lift and secure things even big vessels. Personally I even did splices and other traditional labors with them.

In the past, hemp was the rule; hard to handle (heavy and rigid) is a rough material which becomes easily hardened when wet. Do not allow the bad guys to tie your heroine with that! She will hate you for the rest of the story. And maybe even after... She will have to burn herself to burn the ropes. Bad business.

Fibers, light as they are, even the old nylon or polyethylene, dacron, perlon, etc. are really strong (that's why they are used for that, after all). Just for you to understand what she could face please note that what this guy has to use for cutting the rope. Add to that if your bad guys are good professionals would tie her with the arms on her back. Expect a mess.

My suggestion: provide the bad guys (police also use them) with enough zip ties and convince her to carry a (metallic) big size nail file, starting in Chapter 4, just in case plans change without notice.

Otherwise...

Thank you @atferrari, nice to speak with a rope expert. I definitely won't use hemp. It will be either 1/4-inch poly rope or zip ties. I watched the video you linked, and the hot knife option is along the same lines as I am thinking, but a homemade version. If she doesn't have a heat source, I thought using the battery to heat the knife/wire would work instead of a flame.

 

Breaking a light bulb won’t let you use the filament to burn anything. Once the air hits the filament, it will instantly burn up.

if a length of Nichrome wire from a toaster can be obtained, then with 6V, a 2-3” length can be wrapped around the rope and connected to the lantern battery.

I actually used this technique to create effects for a haunted party. Burning sulfur or burn through fishing line to throw dishes through the air.

 

Wire bracelet: Bracelet
Assuming it's distal to the rope. Remove it. Loop it over the two terminals of the lantern battery and pull tight. The shortest portion, between the terminals will get the hottest. Hold the longest part of the loop with something that's thermally insulating for a short time. I can't quite visualize the acrobatics of burning process, but this may technically work.
Ken

 

Wire bracelet: Bracelet
Assuming it's distal to the rope. Remove it. Loop it over the two terminals of the lantern battery and pull tight. The shortest portion, between the terminals will get the hottest. Hold the longest part of the loop with something that's thermally insulating for a short time. I can't quite visualize the acrobatics of burning process, but this may technically work.
Ken

Thanks @KMoffett that's certainly more the direction I'm hoping to go. Two questions: What material should the bracelet be for best burning, and what are some simple ways a person could protect their hands from getting burned? Are there common clothing items that could add as a buffer from the heat?

 

Re: Zip ties

If you have a little pick and enough movement, you can release the latch. Cheap as I am, I reuse them occasionally,

 

My mother would not allow a rifle for my sixth birthday (like the other boys). My father and I didn't make a big deal about it--if I had, he would have, and she might have. Later he brought home a piece of plywood mounted with 6- and 12- volt transformers, a nichrome resistance coil (oil burning furnace ignitor), and some other gadget, and she said no to me being alone with electricity in the basement. He made a big deal about it. I didn't have to. It escalated. He took it to the limit and she gave in. If you pass 12V through a paper clip (using alligator clips) it will heat up, melt first in the middle, and then if you move the electrodes closer together the incandescent molten sphere will grow to about the size of a pencil eraser and without warning suddenly and spectacularly explode. The light seemed to be whiter than it was possible for white to be. I had never seen anything like it. It was beautiful.

I kept my later work on corona discharge at 15kV (neon sign transformer) on the down-low. At age 7 I knew there were things he ought not to know (for his sake--plausible deniability).

 

Thanks @KMoffett that's certainly more the direction I'm hoping to go. Two questions: What material should the bracelet be for best burning, and what are some simple ways a person could protect their hands from getting burned? Are there common clothing items that could add as a buffer from the heat?

You probably don't need much distance at all to keep from getting burned (for the hands holding the bracelet -- it's a very different matter for any hands/wrists that are bound by the rope).

Imagine taking a propane touch and heating the middle of the bracelet to red hot. How far away from the point of application of heat would your hands need to be in order to be able to hold the bracelet? To get a better mental picture, image holding up the bracelet in one hand and letting it dangle and then applying heat to it with the torch some distance down from where it's being held. How for down do you have to go before the person will be able to hold onto it without getting burned? Not far at all -- the bracelet likely has sufficient thermal resistance that the temperature drops off very quickly and the hands can absorb the residual heat without any problem.

 

I presume you want to use the fact that she is an electrical engineer and want to add science/engineering intrigue into the plot.

That's actually one of the points I'd like to see countered from time to time. Countless shows go over the top with the premise that because Person A has a degree in X that they can do ANYTHING related to X. If a homemade explosive is used, then the person that happens to be a high school chemistry teach obviously must of done it. If someone builds a jammer that spoofs the radar facility, then the guy that's the electrical engineer (and who has worked on commercial HVAC systems his entire career) is the obvious culprit.

Engineers are, first and foremost, problem solvers. Most good engineers are capable of effectively solving problems well outside their own area of expertise and analyzing situations in which a solution outside their area of expertise might be the better way to go (despite almost certainly having a natural bias the other direction). I'd like to see more shows play on that aspect.

 

You probably don't need much distance at all to keep from getting burned (for the hands holding the bracelet -- it's a very different matter for any hands/wrists that are bound by the rope).

Imagine taking a propane touch and heating the middle of the bracelet to red hot. How far away from the point of application of heat would your hands need to be in order to be able to hold the bracelet? To get a better mental picture, image holding up the bracelet in one hand and letting it dangle and then applying heat to it with the torch some distance down from where it's being held. How for down do you have to go before the person will be able to hold onto it without getting burned? Not far at all -- the bracelet likely has sufficient thermal resistance that the temperature drops off very quickly and the hands can absorb the residual heat without any problem.

Got it, that is extremely helpful. I didn't take into account heat falloff. I will do some tests.

Now, for example, if I had a hoop earring, and I attached a middle segment to the two ends of the battery, then theoretically a person could grab the "cold ends" of the earring and there would only be whatever residual heat fell off from the center burn.

You guys are great, I'm learning a ton.

 

Re: Zip ties

If you have a little pick and enough movement, you can release the latch. Cheap as I am, I reuse them occasionally,

You are not the only cheapskate. I do it all the time.

 

Thanks @KMoffett that's certainly more the direction I'm hoping to go. Two questions: What material should the bracelet be for best burning, and what are some simple ways a person could protect their hands from getting burned? Are there common clothing items that could add as a buffer from the heat?

I think that any relative thin metal wire would work. The silver/zinc bracelet would likely work. This is fiction, right? Cotton cloth is what I wear when welding. It slowly burns, as apposed melting to your skin like synthetics. How is she dressed? It's the physical gyrations to get the wire, the fabric, the battery, and the rope arranged behind her back. I assumed her hands are behind her back.

 

That's actually one of the points I'd like to see countered from time to time. Countless shows go over the top with the premise that because Person A has a degree in X that they can do ANYTHING related to X. If a homemade explosive is used, then the person that happens to be a high school chemistry teach obviously must of done it. If someone builds a jammer that spoofs the radar facility, then the guy that's the electrical engineer (and who has worked on commercial HVAC systems his entire career) is the obvious culprit.

Engineers are, first and foremost, problem solvers. Most good engineers are capable of effectively solving problems well outside their own area of expertise and analyzing situations in which a solution outside their area of expertise might be the better way to go (despite almost certainly having a natural bias the other direction). I'd like to see more shows play on that aspect.

This is a good point. Just from this forum alone, I'm learning how engineers think both in and outside of their respective fields. I'll work that into the character.

 

I think that any relative thin metal wire would work. The silver/zinc bracelet would likely work. This is fiction, right? Cotton cloth is what I wear when welding. It slowly burns, as apposed melting to your skin like synthetics. How is she dressed? It's the physical gyrations to get the wire, the fabric, the battery, and the rope arranged behind her back. I assumed her hands are behind her back.

The way it is written right now, her hands are behind her back. So the fewer items required to make this thermal knife, the better. If she can kick the battery over her direction, then really it's just using an existing bracelet (already near the ropes) on her wrists, or biting off a necklace and dropping it behind her shoulder.

Yes this is fiction, but it can be done right. It should be both fairly realistic but also cinematically exciting. If it's only "realistic" then it's just it's The Office.

 

@Triple9Nickel Now isn't this more fun, educational and entertaining than having to pay one person to give one perspective that would probably be junk science anyway?

 

@Triple9Nickel Now isn't this more fun, educational and entertaining than having to pay one person to give one perspective that would probably be junk science anyway?

It's educational and entertaining for sure, though as you can imagine I don't want to post every scenario publicly. Thank you for the suggestion.

 

As this is a rustic setting there is bound to be some bailing wire holding something together & who sais that we cannot use NiCr wire to hold our bales together. As suggested earlier, double up on ends for a hand hold. To see work in progress there just happens to a shard of mirror still hanging on a wall.
Way off subject, in seismic oil exploration, I've blown up several k lb. of ANFO in west Texas. It didn't have a name back then.

 

As this is a rustic setting there is bound to be some bailing wire holding something together & who sais that we cannot use NiCr wire to hold our bales together. As suggested earlier, double up on ends for a hand hold. To see work in progress there just happens to a shard of mirror still hanging on a wall.
Way off subject, in seismic oil exploration, I've blown up several k lb. of ANFO in west Texas. It didn't have a name back then.

That's very helpful, I'll consider the bailing wire.

 

Thank you @atferrari, nice to speak with a rope expert. I definitely won't use hemp. It will be either 1/4-inch poly rope or zip ties. I watched the video you linked, and the hot knife option is along the same lines as I am thinking, but a homemade version. If she doesn't have a heat source, I thought using the battery to heat the knife/wire would work instead of a flame.

Not an expert, just a long time frequent user. To make such a knife red hot exactly there would demand a big battery.
Cut a zip tie with a nail trimmer (people actually does in a pinch) and you are done. Credible, feasible, safe and simple.

 

The way it is written right now, her hands are behind her back. So the fewer items required to make this thermal knife, the better. If she can kick the battery over her direction, then really it's just using an existing bracelet (already near the ropes) on her wrists, or biting off a necklace and dropping it behind her shoulder.

Is she permamntly seated in a chair or free to roam? Can you visualize getting a necklace into her mouth to bite it off?

 

Is she permamntly seated in a chair or free to roam? Can you visualize getting a necklace into her mouth to bite it off?

She's permanently seated in a chair so I'd have to place random "seemingly harmless" items around her. Yes I've tried with the necklace, if it's a long enough chain it's pretty easy to bounce up into your mouth.