Hacker News Reader

Comment by lsiebert | Hacker News Reader

How to do various knots comes to mind. Square knot, A sheet bend, clove and trucker's hitch, prusik, the alpine butterfly knot, and bowlines can all be learned rather quickly, then practiced so they can be remembered easily.

http://paracord550milspec.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/How...

View on HN

My favorite knots to add to your list are adjustable grip hitch (AGH), siberian hitch, and zeppelin bend.

The AGH is super easy to tie and very versatile. The Siberian is useful for tying a rope around a static object such as a pole or a tree. Bends are rarely useful for me since I rarely need to join two ropes together, but if you are going to learn a bend, you might as well learn the most beautiful one.

Yeah I think the zeppelin bend is the greatest knot ever, extremely secure and 100% jam proof (jam proof means the knot is easily untied even after extreme loads). I can’t think of any other bend that has those two properties, usually it’s one or the other

I like the Alpine Butterfly Bend, https://www.animatedknots.com/alpine-butterfly-bend-knot, mostly because I already know/use the Alpine Butterfly Loop.

Two interlocked bowlines will get you this.

> Bends are rarely useful for me since I rarely need to join two ropes together, but if you are going to learn a bend, you might as well learn the most beautiful one.

I'm sure I've used a sheet bend at least three times in the last year in random situations. I haven't used the zeppelin bend, but I would say having an easy-to-learn-and-tie-but-effective knot "in your kit" is quite useful; you never quite know when it will come in handy.

European death knot is much easier to learn than zeppelin bend.

All great Metal band names!

I remember learning these before but due to not finding any use case for them, I already forgot how to do them properly.

Only thing I regularly tie nowadays are my shoelaces.

EDIT: Grammar

> Only thing I regularly tie nowadays are my shoelaces.

For that, in much less than an hour, you can learn the Ian Knot: https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/ianknot.htm

It makes shoelace tying very fast and secure (the GIF at the top is how long it actually takes!).

IIRC it's just "Ian's way of tying a reef/square knot".

Make sure you're not tying a granny and you're golden. If you have problems with long laces, or ones that come undone, then a surgeons knot can help.

I tried Ian's method for a couple of weeks and reverted back, it was too fiddly for me.

https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/betterbowknot.htm for life

Hm, well that looks much slower, and the Ian Knot never comes undone for me.

Ian's secure knot is great, too.

Not that it's not a neat knot (repeat that for a tongue twister!), but I chuckled a bit at:

> With practice, I can now tie my shoelaces in about one third of the time of a conventional knot!

So... 1 second instead of 3? Amazing ;)

I’ve also learned a number of knots. The only knot I ever really tie is the tautline hitch. The average person cannot string up a piece of rope and remove all slack because all they know is the granny or square knot. This knot is also incredibly simple and versatile. If you are reading this do yourself a favor and learn this over the next 5 minutes. The bolin should also be learned because the tautline hitch cannot be used for rescue purposes.

For the curious, it's bowline: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowline

Just so you're aware, the bowline is considered somewhat dangerous because it has a high chance of being tied incorrectly.

The only real advantage it has over a double figure 8 is that it's easier to untie after dynamic cinching.

https://rockandice.com/climb-safe/climb-safe-rethinking-the-...

The bowline has other advantages. It's also much faster to tie than a figure-8 follow-through, for example. I imagine it takes less rope, too.

We use the bowline (without backup) in industry. I've never heard of anyone having an issue with it. Any equipment is dangerous if you set it up halfway, walk away, and forget to finish. That's why you never do anything halfway. That failure mode is not specific to knots, or any particular knot.

Interestingly, the bowline and the cat's claw are the same knot, but the cat's claw uses two rope ends rather than one and it's very simple to tie, unlike the tricky bowline.

The problem with this is practical use. I so rarely need to knot something securely or in a special way that it doesn't seem worth the time to learn. I can look things up if I find a use.

What practical uses do you use knots for?

Someone close to me taught me how to square knot, so my hoodie-tied-around-my-waist would stop slipping, as I was using a double overhand knot before.

I'd also like to add that learning knots is honestly more of a 5-minute commitment to learn than a 1-hour commitment, but it's definitely still a commitment.

The problem with knots is that there are so many, and even the most popular ones have serious problems.

For example, everyone recommends bowline, but it's unsafe without securing the working end. Everyone recommends square knot, but it's easy to tie incorrectly (getting a granny knot instead).

Figuring out which knots to learn will take a lot longer than an hour. Here's my list:

Overhand loop, figure eight follow-through, adjustable grip hitch, trucker's hitch, kalmyk loop.

Add Alpine Butterfly and that's a pretty solid list.

Figure eight bend > square knot.

Also two-half hitches and the taughtline hitch. Ever need to tie a rope to a pole or a tree? Two-half hitches is your friend. It's also really easy to undo.

very much agree - I would suggest as a starting point learning a couple basic knot families and then the more important of how to apply them. Keeping it simple - learn a clove hitch, a figure 8, and a bowline (maybe also a sheet bend). Those cover almost all the use cases you will come across without having to remember many knots. Is an alpine/butterfly better than a figure 8 on a bight for a loop in the middle of a rope? yes, of course, but it’s one more thing to remember. If you like knots, learn all the good ones, there’s a knot for every use. But if you just want to have sone practical knowledge that is used rarely, learn just three or four very versatile knots and when to use them.

This ties in to how I like to say the rope may be one of the greatest inventions of mankind.

I find myself unravelling mentally when it comes to remembering knots and the like

Many of the most useful knots are very easy to learn, there's no need to be afrayed!

That's nothing, you should see what the mathematicians get up to when they try to figure out if two knots are different.

The Ian Knott for tying your shoelaces a little faster

Reply on news.ycombinator.com