You won’t get there if you wait …trying and doing will get you further. I learned how to do it after reading your post but had to figure out how to get the result you want…If you are trying to hold on to the old mesh as it was difficult to do, I can understand that…
I just took 2 minutes to make a rope, and curve it around a rod. This is not from a tutorial…I figured it out by trial and error, so now I know how and can use that info on other things. and it only has 3 circles in it and one single vertex. I am not a Blender Guru either, just someone else trying to figure stuff out.
