Learning Knots - Recommendations

[Hermanns]

My wife and I have purchased a few books but still the diagrams seem to stump is .

Does anyone recommend any online, video or other options?

Thanks !

[Travelnik]

Originally Posted by Hermanns

My wife and I have purchased a few books but still the diagrams seem to stump is .

Does anyone recommend any online, video or other options?

Thanks !

Here you go:
Animated Knots by Grog | How to Tie Knots | Fishing, Boating, Climbing, Scouting, Search and Rescue, Household, Decorative, Rope Care,

[EzzyD]

Try Animated Knots by Grog | How to Tie Knots | Fishing, Boating, Climbing, Scouting, Search and Rescue, Household, Decorative, Rope Care,..


Quite nice...

[The Garbone]

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...w_myk_ro_title

Free book on Kindle, missing one or two diagrams but I really like the way he has opinions on knot types. Worth a look.

[capngeo]

Distill all the fancy knots down to a bowline, clove hitch, square, and figure 8... With those almost any task can be handled

[DeepFrz]

Animated knots by Grog is just one of the animated sites on the internet. Just google knots and you will have lots to choose from.

[David M]

Knowing a whole bunch of knots is fun but for boating it comes down to half dozen knots or so that you need to know.

[pdxsailordiver]

Checkout the apple app what knot to do.
Tim

[dugout]

What we can tie and what we use are two different things in most cases.
Like others, I have my "go-to" and the following knots get the most use:
Bowline
Buntline Hitch
Square Knot
Rolling Hitch
Clove Hitch

These get used as well but not as much:
Constrictor
Klemheist
Alpine Butterfly
Tugboat hitch
Triple Overhand Noose

[rebel heart]

Big fan of:
- constrictor
- bowline
- rolling hitch
- carrick bend
- trucker's hitch
- round turn and two half hitches

Maybe a few others, but those do the bulk of the work. Animated Knots by Grog | How to Tie Knots | Fishing, Boating, Climbing, Scouting, Search and Rescue, Household, Decorative, Rope Care, is great and there is actually a terrific app you can download for a smartphone which has all of them on there as well. However you learn them, just practice every few days on repeat. Best way to learn is to keep drilling yourself on them. Use different settings to: upside down, to your left, to your right, etc.

[Andrew Troup]

If you know a bowline, then you effectively already know the most useful of the knots which is not mentioned above (and which can really save your bacon)

That's a sheet bend. Anytime you feel tempted to use a square knot (reef knot, in the rest of the Anglo world) to join two lines for any purpose other than tying in reef points, this is the knot you need to use.

I don't recall many times I've been asked to do something on a yacht to which the sane response would be "you seem to mistake me, Clark Kent, for my alter ego"

It's a long story, but the short version is that, standing on a massive headsail sheet block (which wouldn't have looked out of place on a 120' superyacht) on tip toes, reaching as high as I could, I somehow managed, with the indispensable help of a double sheet bend, to attach a new working end onto a leech line.

The line in question had all but disappeared into the tabling of the only sail we could carry, in storm force conditions, in a fairly remote corner of the Southern Ocean.

We couldn't drop the sail (which was on a hydraulic furler) and its life would have been measured in hours if we couldn't stop the leech from thrumming.

[Andrew Troup]

A few more random thoughts: It's better to know a few knots well than lots of knots sketchily

- in particular, it's great to be able to tie a bowline reliably in the dark, under water, towards you, away from you,
(and possibly behind your back if you want to show off. I'm not kidding about the others, though....)

There are two ways to tie a bowline; one is mirror image of the other, and only one is truly resistant to loosening when jerking when tied in laid (three strand) as opposed to braid cordage. To my mind the only way to learn a bowline is to come up with a sequence of hand moves which produce the desired result with the minimum of fiddling, practice it intensively for a period, and then rely on muscle memory to tell you how to tie it.

I imagine Brion Toss's book probably has something about ways to throw a bowline into a rope, but I don't have it by me.

You certainly won't need all the other ones mentioned so far, but most of the short lists look good to go, at least, to me.

And one other thing: make sure you get a feel for which cordage takes a knot nicely, in the various sizes. And try to accumulate a whole bunch of short ends of those cords, down to quite small diameters, for lashing and for "make, do and mend".
Cordage from a hardware store is virtually useless at sea, and even some bargain marine stores might try to sell you (say) polypropylene, which does have uses, but very specific and few (eg floating lines, were neither strength nor durability matter)
Slippery rope like that does not well a knot take.

ON EDIT
looking quickly at the previous recommendations, the only knot which might appear to serve the same purpose as the sheet bend is the carrick bend, but this slips for considerably further before it pulls tight, which would have ruled it out in the instance I gave. For that reason, and because it's structurally the same knot as a bowline which you need to know anyway, I personally think the sheet bend is the bend of choice. You need to know at least one bend (a secure knot for joining two lines under tension - as the name suggests: it's what you would use to extend a sheet)

[Seaworthy Lass]

Originally Posted by Andrew Troup

If you know a bowline, then you effectively already know the most useful of the knots which is not mentioned above (and which can really save your bacon)

That's a sheet bend. Anytime you feel tempted to use a square knot (reef knot, in the rest of the Anglo world) to join two lines for any purpose other than tying in reef points, this is the knot you need to use.

I don't recall many times I've been asked to do something on a yacht to which the sane response would be "you seem to mistake me, Clark Kent, for my alter ego"

It's a long story, but the short version is that, standing on a massive headsail sheet block (which wouldn't have looked out of place on a 120' superyacht) on tip toes, reaching as high as I could, I somehow managed, with the indispensable help of a double sheet bend, to attach a new working end onto a leech line.

The line in question had all but disappeared into the tabling of the only sail we could carry, in storm force conditions, in a fairly remote corner of the Southern Ocean.

We couldn't drop the sail (which was on a hydraulic furler) and its life would have been measured in hours if we couldn't stop the leech from thrumming.

I second that a sheet bend needs to be on the short list. It is the easiest and quickest way to securely join two lines of unequal size (use a double sheet bend if the lines are very different in size). The only drawback is that there can't be any load on the two lines whilst they are being tied.

The square knot (left over right, right over left) seems to make a few lists and yes, it can be tied under load and is useful if the object being secured is not moving much, but it is also apparently a knot that when misused causes more deaths and injuries than all the other knots combined. Interestingly it has been used for millenia.

[resilientg]

I always find the hardest knot to do is the "im afraid not", or sometime times the famous german knot, the "kutthekuntzoff"

hahaha

Matthew

[Seaworthy Lass]

I have a query.
Been practising knots since reading this post (having a few under my belt I had become complacent and it is fun learning a few new ones).
The Carrick and Alpine butterfly bends seem more secure than a double sheet bend. Can they be used to join lines of significantly different diameter?