Pls help: I bought my first rope and missunderstood how to uncoil it correctly
Now it seems to be all twisted. How do I go about fixing this problem?

I didn't know there was a right & wrong way - would be interested to hear the correct way if there is.

I had one new rope that was quite "kinky" ( at the lack of a better word ). I found simply fluffing the rope worked well (start at one end and bundle it in the floor as you run through the length of it, i.e. pulling it with one hand while holding it with the other) , or even better if you pull it through biners somewhere, the higher the better as there is more rope hanging free and able to unwind, so to speak.

Fluffing / running it through biners about 3-4 times seemed to sort it out.

Hope that makes sense.

I used to hold one end and throw the rest of a bridge or cliff, it hangs there and gets rid of some twists, but i agree, lead a route then pull it thru. then find another route and lead that, then pull it thru.

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If you aren't willing to solve your own problems, how can you expect others to?

New ropes are always a bit 'difficult'. On a clean floor run the rope through your hands from end to end twice then do this again shaking the rope out with each 'yard' through your hands. You want to shake the twists down the piece hanging from ur hand to the floor, it will get very twisty towards the end but persevere. Repeat if necessary. Now 'flake' the rope (same as step one) onto the ground sheet of your rope bag and just store it like that. Flake again at the crag if its been sitting in the bag for more than a week or two. You may need to do the untwisting operation a couple of additional times before the rope is 'tamed'.

If you dont own a rope bag then coil it alpine style - take both ends and yard in a couple of arms lengths and throw them to one side holding both ropes 2-3m down from the ends in one hand, now yard in an arms length and lay the loop one way over your hand (to the other side of the free ends), yard in again and lay the loop the other way, keep going until the whole rope is layed with loops hanging either side of ur hand, take the two free ends and wrap them around the bundle just below ur hand and then through the loop where your hand was holding the bundle. Voila! a correctly coiled rope. (This quite difficult to describe so get someone who knows to show you if confused) Hang the rope in your cupboard by the free ends.

NB: Avoid coiling the rope in circles over your head as this only makes the twists worse and is a far slower way of coiling a rope.

I always recommend that when new, you take the still bound rope and have a mate put his arms through the two loops at the ends.
Then undo the plastic staps or whatever the rope was bound with.
Then, from the one end, uncoil the rope into big loops on a clean floor (like Mod said).
Do NOT throw the whole thing down and start to coiling it from one end to the other. This actually creates bad rope coil twisting, and you'll have to climb allot before the coils work themselves out.

To undo the coiling, climb on one end, and when lowered to the floor, pull the end that was tied to you through the chains and climb with the other end next. Repeat 50 times and the bad coils might disappear.

Keep on swopping the ends and you might even add a year to your rope's life imho

ya dig?

Turtle is correct: a rope is coiled longitudinally, thus it needs to be uncoiled in the same manner the first time.

Jacques, I'll sell you a Hawk at a good price and that will automatically add a year or 3 to what you are currently accustomed

My deepest condolences Deon you are indeed in the deep end at the moment.
There is a VERY specific way to uncoil a new rope, as you have now discovered. And if not done there is a massive mess of kinks. It needed to be "unrolled" as if it were wound around a barrel. Done correctly there will not be a single kink. Done incorrectly, for every coil you now have a twist/kink.

If you live in a flat I would hold the one end and chuck the other out the window to let the whole thing try to untwist- it will def help but even then you will find to a certain extent it will be happy to just dangle there with twists. You kind of need to manually untwist them. Just flaking the rope out does very little except at the very end when the tip is free to untwist a few turns. The last thing I would do is weight the rope until you have given it your best untwist effort, because the weighting reinforces the kinks (like standing on a crumpled shirt)
I have to wonder if its not too late to try to re-coil it into the twists if you know what i mean ( so it is straight/unkinked while coiled (as you bought it), and then do the unwinding barrel thing.

Good luck and let us know how it goes!