[1] https://www.animatedknots.com/lanyard-knot
[2] https://www.animatedknots.com/midshipmans-hitch-knot
[3] https://www.animatedknots.com/constrictor-knot-twisting-meth...
Favorite knot (involving a Rabbit going "through the hole, around the tree, and back down the hole"): Bowline Knot
Except for tying shoes (A doubly slipped reef knot, where a reef knot is left over right and right over left which makes a knot tidy and tight)
And the Uni-knot, even though I've never fished:
A jester offends the king and fears he will executed, and so decides to kill an evil beholder, also called an eye-tyrant, to win back favor.
He charges into the cave and stabs it through the eye, but gets scared and runs away. Coming out he remembers if he doesn't do something, he's dead anyway. Going back, he finds it dead, and he has time to take a long and winding road back, going around his journeys on the inside of his mind.
Having learned from this he decides neither the rashness that got him in the mess nor the cowardice that made him run was any way to live, and this is why the uni-knot can use its power wisely and will not cut itself when tied in Spectra.
And the highwayman's hitch which tells the story of two outlaws and a failed robbery. They're going to tunnel under the bank wall, but they see a hole in the plan. One(Representing one side of the rope) sticks his head up and he had an idea to fix it. The other one sees yet another flaw, and sticks his head in.
Unfortunately, they overlooked one small thing, the cops are waiting, and all it takes is one pull to unravel this complicated scheme and they go to jail.
It takes a long time to find the story hidden in the knots, but once you do, you are relying a lot less on spatial intelligence or muscle memory, and it becomes something you can actually learn and teach without needing access to an entirely new mode of thought and learning that doesn't make any sense to people who don't really have it and probably takes a long time to develop before you can even start learning the knots themselves.
They made a cool thing. It is valuable to me. I paid for it, and we're done.
The app downloads once and doesn't need an internet connection. If you drew a Venn diagram of "Times I want to Know How to Tie a Specific Type of Knot" and "Times When I Am Out of Cellphone Range", there would be significant overlap between the two circles.
I'm not a particularly good follower of technical diagrams, but I find the instructions to be very clear and easy to follow. It's rare that I don't get a knot right the first time.
I've secured tarps, tents, clothes lines, gear onto vehicles and (most recently) a mountain bike that was missing its rear suspension, all thanks to this app.
Here's the link to the app available for various devices: https://www.animatedknots.com/shop
EDIT: I forgot about the fishing knots. No matter how good the app is as a resource, I always get confused and frustrated by fishing knots. But I also get confused and frustrated by fishing, so I can't really blame the app for this.
> The Midshipman’s Hitch Knot is promoted by Ashley (ABOK # 1993, p 325) as the only knot to tie in the following unlikely but critical circumstance: you fall overboard and catch hold of the line which you have prudently left trailing astern and find yourself hanging on with difficulty. Before you tire, you manage to bring the bitter end of the rope around your back. You then have to tie a suitable knot to make a loop around you. A bowline cannot be tied under load. Two Half Hitches will slide and constrict you. The Rolling Hitch is the answer. Even as the second turn is tucked “up” into the correct place, the major strain is taken and the final Half Hitch can be tied with less urgency.
That song both slaps and subverts all expectations. I had always assumed they were a one-hit wonder and simply disappeared. Very creative bunch.
Now I can't get it out of my head.
I'm certain I skipped many but those are the ones I feel are most common to doing anything useful with a rope. The trucker's hitch and bowline are the ones that can save your life, but the rest are everyday knots that you might already know except for their names. For example, I don't even know what the shoe tying knots are named but everyone knows those.
I dont know, the 3 different ways to tie a clove hitch is documented on here, which is good start, but the one that was engrained in me was clove hitch loops, although their animation makes it even harder to understand.
They should have some hands holding the rope showing the 1st and 3rd person perspective position of the rope in the hands and the position of the hands when tying some knots. So much easier to understand.
I really do wonder about the standard of teaching sometimes.
Probably fastest most reliable knot to have that can be slung over a spar end in a hurry.
That bowline knot story was taught in cubs, perhaps useful for young minds, but does it get forgotten in adulthood as a result? I certainly had forgotten that story until you reminded me.
I'll also credit the Red Cross at being best at teaching me knots and lashings.
I learned it as the "Taut Line Hitch."
The practicality of knots and their traits is what drives their use. When you deal with boats, you need these knots to perform and not come undone when you are not expecting them to (which could be dangerous). And you also need them come apart when you need them to.
Properties like that are what makes a lot of these knots so useful. Technically, you can get by with knowing only a handful. But there are a lot of specialized one with niche usages.
Naturally, most stories revolve around something impressive (or damning) for humanity like "war" or "kindness", but in the past I've wondered what kind of story one could make if the answer was "knots".
Perhaps that's a question for mathematicians, and whether some facility for topological knot-thinking might be very handy in some kind of physics or engineering.
And while web apps have plenty of practical benefits, those are mostly from the perspective of the developer. As a user, once an app is downloaded, good native apps are preferable just about every time.
Now I just rely on muscle memory, as trying to "understand" knots always leaves me frustrated...
Please tell me where the app has "it's uses" here?
I’m just sharing a useful knot and not trying to get into a Vim vs. Emacs type argument or anything.
I finally got around to doing my day skipper last year and on the course was a Russian who spoke English perfectly fluently but struggled with the technical terms that the rest of us took for granted. It probably doesn't help that sailing is one of those sports where the difference in terminology between British and American English is sometimes significant, for example I don't think the term 'kicking strap' is used in the US.
The knots I use most often even outside of sailing are the bowline and the round turn and two half hitches.
How is it going to screw your system? And just disallow running in background, disallow internet access if you are on mobile. I don't want to fiddle around with my browser when I can install a light-weight app.
Not everyone is a "wow all apps very scary" person
There is a very nice animation on the site for the Monkey's Fist (where I just now learned the finishing touch to deal with the loose end of the line).
As a fly angler, in addition to the practicality of a given knots purpose and use is the practicality of implementing it in different conditions. There is often a lot of additional “tribal knowledge” on some of these knots, like the clinch knot is great but tying it with some hemostats speeds the process up and is easier when standing in a river. There is a great trick for tying a blood knot which makes it easy whereas doing it from the website would be nearly impossible outside in the weather.
Place where I first heard about the Ashley Book of Knots (ABOK). The book is a historical gem, as well as the official reference for knots. Great stories about knots.
Trucker's Knot, with cool reference to Ylvis, of What Did the Fox Say? https://www.animatedknots.com/truckers-hitch-knot
"Do you love advertising?
We need to apologize in advance, because our apps are nothing but knots. We are sure that there are other apps that will suit your needs."
My only complaint is that the cord tends to be a bit stiff but that's unavoidable if you're using real cord.
People like making apps, and users seem to like them, too. Grow up.
Now I'll find myself in a position where I know there's a knot that solves the problem I have, but don't know how to describe it well enough to even search.
Knots really seem to behave differently on different sizes & kinds of ropes, and it can be hard to remember (for me at least) how to tie a knot you learned with twine on a bigger boat line. How easily they bind, how well they hold, and how easily they release also starts to get way more important when you’re outside and depending on the lines.
If I were installing a knot app and it required enrolling me in their Knot Tying Social Network, I'd uninstall. In fact, if it couldn't run in Airplane Mode, I'd uninstall it.
https://www.animatedknots.com/bowline-knot
There's a way of tying it one-handed as well, which can be useful in rescue scenarios (i.e. you are a hiker who fell into a ravine, and someone lowers a rope to you. Even if one arm is broken/disabled you could tie a bowline around your waist with your other arm)
We used them as the starter knot before lashing someone down on a stretcher before carrying them out of a disaster zone. It was quite fun, putting the stretcher up on its end or turning it upside down to demonstrate how well protected someone is once lashed to a stretcher.
I like the effort and organisation of the website though, so I'm not knocking it, just pointing out it could be improved with video's that show 1st and 3rd person perspective of hands tying knots. That way, when abseiling, rock climbing or doing other Fred Dibnah style activities, you know if your knots have been tied properly or not.
So much trust is placed on people who run these activities, its nice to have piece of mind, but its probably one of the reasons why the carabiner was invented.
- it can be dangerous when (say) undoing the knot in stormy weather because you end up having to wedge your fingers between loop and post to undo the knot.
- theoretically if the boat rocks a lot and the loop is too tight, the mooring post could end up pushing into the end bit of rope, eventually undoing the knot.
So it was just considered better to make the lefthanded version the one you pick by habit. Now I haven't sailed in (effectively) a quarter century since so the fact that I remember this says something about how serious they were about drilling this into our heads.
When I think about it know the difference in risk is probably not significant for individuals, but I imagine that if you are a sailing camp responsible for hundreds of teens each summer it reduces the chance of accidents for them.
https://notableknotindex.webs.com/
contains a short list of knots along with insightful comments on their use. Some, like the Slipped Buntline Hitch, show alternative forms to alleviate deficiencies (jamming in this case) or for different use cases. One of my favorites is the Versatacle, which provides a pulley like mechanical advantage. It's been my go-to tensioning knot since learning about it. Animated Knots is great for understanding the form of knots like the Zepplin Bend, and I use both sites when learning a new knot or brushing up on an old one.
I can't believe so many beginner tutorials seem to forget this very basic first question of "how do I prepare my materials?".
> knot tying is about as harmless as it gets
What does this have to do with my argument? Maybe it's less likely to screw my system intentionally then, but it might still track me. How do you know the app is not as bad as Twitter or LinkedIn?
> People like making apps, and users seem to like them, too. Grow up.
I am just showing a path to an alternate better future. If you don't like questioning the status quo because you think everybody is currently happy, fine. But asking me to grow up because I am worried about corporations having more access to my devices than they need seems unfair.