I believe knot-tying would be a great, life-long skill to have, especially being able to know which knots work best for different situations, like when the rope is thick and not very flexible or bendable.
I have lots of nylon rope and fishing line of various diameters, but don’t know where to begin and/or the best way to get started. My goal is to make this a long-term hobby and spend 1-2 hours per week improving my knot-tying knowledge, skill, and speed.
Fill yer boots mate!
Top three that I use on a regular basis
Bowline (quick knot that’s strong, a common error is that when you try to pull it tight it falls apart, dont panic, you just went the wrong way through the loop you make in step 1)
Sheet bend (a bowline that’s gone horribly wrong somewhere (you’ll get that joke after a bit of practice)lmao but theknot can attach two completely different ropes together)
Figure 8 loop (like a bowline but no matter how much weight you put in the loop it’s still easy to undo)
Reef knot - the most common way to tie two ends together
Monkeys fist (impractical unless you’re throwing ropes into trees, but real fun to make out of old climbing rope if you’ve got pets.
If you want to save your hands and your floor from being shredded and filled with tiny shards of nylon fiber, pick up some of the stuff that has a core and a woven cover from a local hardware store or talk to an outdoor shop to see if theyve got any unusable lengths.
I picked up some Dyneema offcuts dirt cheap from a local sailing chandler’s on ebay (Dyneema’s the brand name for an often overpriced rope made from UHMWPE - “Ultra high molecular weight poly ethylene”, same material as plastic bags but DENSE and as a result hilariously strong- my 3mm thick rope can pull 1 ton before breaking, shit’s WILD)
Videos would probably be more useful than a book or illustration. I always had a hard time with certain knots from static images, but seeing it done in real time was a huge help when I was a scout.
Matey, you need to find some seamen!
I started knots as a kid from a few pages of drawings in a pirate story book.
What i recently found was a nice box with a few ends of differenly sized ropes and an instruction booklet.
For me? Have a reason to tie a knot. Then you’ll tie that knot, learn why you tie that knot, and then you’ll be able to tie that knot.
Others have covered the practical use knots, so I want to throw a couple fun ones out there:
- Double carrick bend
- Monkey’s fist
If you’re into crafts, friendship bracelets use half hitches. Macrame and tatting are also variations on tying knots in patterns.
Go and do something with it. Rock climbing knots are very useful for outdoor stuff. Start with basic rock climbing (sport) and get into trad style, then you’ll learn all types of knots.
Yes. Find something you enjoy that depends on knots. Perhaps a shibari friend.
animatedknots.com - amazing step by step on how to properly tie things. The downside is that there are a lot of knots that are either hyper specific or more decorative than anything. I climb and sail - both are knot-heavy. 95%of the time I use one of five or six knots/hitches. I’d focus on the utilitarian knots personally. These are the knots that can accomplish real stuff - but if you get them wrong, could be fatal in the wrong circumstances.
- Simple overhand - great for keeping a loose end from flopping around, connecting two ropes (need long tails or a secondary knot to keep it from moving), or joining webbing (known as a water knot in this context)
- bowline - great for tying around things like if you want to anchor something to a tree
- figure 8 - the go-to for tying yourself into a rope when climbing. I rarely use it anywhere else as it’s bulky and difficult to untie if loaded hard. A bowline can be used in its place for tying in, but the big advantage of the 8 is that it’s easy to visually check. Every few years a miss-tied bowline kills a climber.
- clove hitch - this one is super underrated. It looks like you just wrapped a rope around something but it self tightens thanks to the way the strands lie over each other. It’s also super easy to adjust.
- trucker hitch - it’s really just a couple of overhand knots, but this one is my default for lashing down loads because you can get the rope super tight. This is how I tie my canoe down to the roof of the car.
- fisherman knots - killer for connecting ropes - or making non-load-bearing adjustable loops (bracelets, necklaces), or tidying up loose ends.
Bonus knots *alpine butterfly - gives you a load bearing loop in the middle of a rope without requiring access to the ends. An overhand on a bight also gives a loop, but the overhand can move when loaded. Alpine butterfly stays where you put it, looks cool, and is fun and easy to tie. *prussic - this hitch can slide along a rope when unloaded and then locks when you apply weight. This let’s you move up or down a fixed line. A Texas Prussic involves one prussic attached to your harness and one free but with a foot loop. Hang on the harness prussic, slide the unloaded foot one up the rope. Stand up on the foot one (locks in place) and slide the unweighted harness loop up the rope, sit back down in your harness. Congrats, you just ascended 100mm up a rope. Rinse and repeat until you get to the top or reverse the process to go back down.
The midshipmans hitch (or the inferior scouting version called a taut-line hitch) is technically less useful in almost all cases to the Truckers Hitch you mention, but it is pretty good for tying down tarps and shit for camping, so the point that the people you are with will think you are some kind of amazing outdoors genius for whipping it out like its no big deal.
Also for camping: Tying a tight ridge-line using a truckers hitch across the top of your site and then using it to dangle lamps or to anchor tarps or hang clothes to dry or whatever using sliding prusik knots tends to impress as well. I like prusiks for this over the alpine butterfly because you can just tie the loops ahead of time and they are easy to slide around along the ridgeline.
I mostly use:
- square knot (generl tying a rope around something; learned it earlier than memory)
- bowline hitch (loop at the end of a knot that won’t close up, like I need a handle or want to attach the end of a rope to something; learned it in boy scouts maybe)
- taut line hitch (clothesline, tent to stake, something that I can tie loose and then cinch up for tension; learned it from a cousin while camping)
Sounds like there are some other ones I could learn too! But as many folks have said, learn a coupe and use them frequently.
Oooh thank you very much for the list. A friend showed me a knot once which allows one to transport stuff from end to the other, something akin to a rail like system. Maybe it was this alpine knot you mentioned. Very cool!
Just be careful not to overdo it!
NSFW, nudity
Oglaf, if anybody wonders where the equally funny and kinky comics are from.
70% are genuinely funny, 20% are a normal situation, but someone has their dick out for no reason and 10% are just completely incomprehensible.
I love it.
The Bear Essentials has good knot-making videos on YouTube. My personal opinion is that you shouldn’t learn knots just for their own sake - instead, figure out which ones best fit the needs in your own life. The best way to remember a knot is to actually use it.
Ones like the bowline, alpine butterfly, and trucker’s hitch are immensely practical and easy to untie. I keep a piece of paracord on my desk at all times just for practicing knots. It’s definitely a use-it-or-lose-it skill.
These are probably the three most important knots you could learn.
All of the above! You’ll need to practice and like others have said - an application. So get joining a group and absorb other kinds of media about it.
Practice. I had a friend that was in her residency living with 2 other baby doctors.
They always had a pile of string on the table in front of the TV and would practice tying surgical knots (whatever exactly those are, IDK). They wanted to develop the muscle memory so they could tie them without looking.
Go climbing! I suuuuuck at ropes. But climbing you are forced to learn.
it’s not going to stick unless you have an application for it.
like, learn the knots that you would actually use in real life or for your hobbies.
it’s not going to stick unless you have an application for it.
I am trying to get into “low dopamine hobbies” which is why I got into beekeeping last year and has been one of the best decisions of my life. Anything you do regularly becomes positively reinforced so as long as an activity isn’t annoying or negative, you can do it more often until you enjoy it, even if it’s not enjoyable at first. I also would like to practice speed at tying knots since that would give me a goal to look forward to. I’m a huge fan of watching speedrunning videos and always find doing something fast is entertaining, even if the underlying activity is nothing special in and of itself. I also love watching people play piano pieces extremely fast, and I myself have put in hundreds of hours of practice into playing 1-2 piano pieces about a decade ago. It gave me a goal to look forward to and I enjoyed the challenge, especially since I was terrible at piano before I began. 😁
I think you’ll be fine if you’re interested in it. It helps to reinforce if you use the knowledge practically but I went through a phase where I learned a bunch of knots for climbing. Turns out you mostly use the same one or two knots for most things and most of what I learned wasn’t super practical. I still enjoyed it and occasionally find uses for some of the other knots outside of climbing. Most I still remember despite not using often though I admit I can’t quite recall how to tie a Monkey’s Fist properly….
I was in scouts most of my childhood and I still find myself using the knots I learned around the house. Even though I just found this website after seeing your post, I think it’s just what you need: https://www.animatedknots.com/complete-knot-list
I second this source. I’m lucky enough to still have the app on my phone that still works perfectly even though it’s gone on the google app store. Looks like the apple version of the app is still available.
It’s not perfect, but if I ever got stuck somewhere with no internet and still happened to have my phone and it charged, I would have a fuck ton of offline, robust information.
