5 Knots Everyone Should Know

so I would guess 80% of the time when I pick up a rope to use it I start by tying a bowline that's because 80% of the time the first thing I need to do is attach the end of the rope to an object and a bowline is hands-down the best not to use to create a loop in the end of the line there are several reasons for that but the first one is because you know if you tie a bowline to create your loop it doesn't matter how hard you pull that loop is not going to get smaller and it's not gonna get bigger that knot won't slip the second thing is it doesn't matter how hard you pull you can always get a bowline off your line and it will not have kink the line so tightly that it weakens the parent line stock enough to worry about 10% 15% perhaps and a hard pull but that's not as much as some knots even if it's wet okay even with wet that's one of the reasons that in the maritime industry bowline bow line it's used to tie a ship to a dock because when you tie a ship to a dock it if that ship comes loose if this knot breaks if it stretches out you have a slow-motion shipwreck and whether a shipwreck has slow motion or high speed you don't want it that's why you use a bowline not only will a bowline make a bulletproof fixed loop but if it's a slip knot you need the bowline is a place to start sometimes you need a loop that's gonna render down it's going to come up tight and if you have a bowline down you just put a bullet in it and then reach through and there's your slip knot see that and what that does actually let me move this around here so you can see the bowline you don't have to worry about the slip knot ever failing because you've got some Mickey Mouse series of half hitches over there creating the slip loop that's a that is a bowline in a slip knot application that you can trust your life to now there are several ways to try to tie a bowline like maybe three that I know of there are probably more than that and they're all good and it's fun to know two or three ways but if you're just gonna learn one not just one figure out at least one way to tie a bowline securely confidently in a hurry and you're going to a lot better about walking up to a rope with the intention of doing some work the second knot I want to point out is maybe the easiest of the knots and I'm going to show you it's a knot that sometimes you think well that's almost not even a knot not a knot and it's something that if you have it in your toolkit you may not realize that you would ever need it until the moment comes that you need it and you'll go AHA a larks head will do it one of the advantages of a larks head is it's a loop a sliding a choking loop that goes in instantly see that now you've seen that you've done it you've played with string and done that and you might not even know when it's a knot it's a larks head so you remember how I mentioned that a bowline is the way to put a loop in the end of a rope well a larks head is one very good way to put a choking or a sliding loop in the middle of a line see that we're in the middle of the line and we need a loop that's gonna come tight flam you got a loop that came tight let's say this is 16 feet long you got a man up on a scaffold who needs it up there he's up there 20 feet he drops you a rope maybe he drops you a 50 foot rope you get to about the middle of that rope you make your larks head you throw it around your 4x4 we render it down and while he lifts it you have a tag line on the ground that could control the ascent you see that he can lift on one of the ends while you're letting the other end slide through your hand controlling the ascent and the act of holding that bitter end makes the not very safe most of the time that I use a larks head I'm using it to secure the end of a string line to a nail it makes a dandy little Slipknot and it can be in the middle of a line maybe I'm coming over to a nail in both directions he gives me a way to tie off secure enough can't trust your life to it but you can certainly trust it to hold the end of a string line and it comes off in a moment you just grab that middle Bight and you're free so very nice little knot sometimes it's the only one that'll work now if you ever have to tighten a rope down on a trailer if you're securing a load and you don't want it to loosen up in the wind and you don't want it to vibrate loose and you've got to get it way tighter than you can pull it and you've got to hold it tight while you're securing the final knots and every time you try that your rope slips and it's never quite tight this is the knot it's the trickiest knot I'm gonna show you it's also my favorite knot I love this it's called a sheepshank I learned to tie it when I was 11 years old now a lot of guys who actually know how to tie knots who know how to handle ropes will use a trucker's knot in this situation but a trucker's knot it's not as good sorry guys now you may bust my chops but it's just not it takes longer to tie takes a lot longer to untie and it can put a knot in your line that'll take you 10 minutes to weasel out of there by the time you get where you're going and it's been hot and cold and wet and it's been frozen a couple times that truckers knot can really be hard to get out this is the knot that I use every single time that I'm tying a load down that has to stay put imagine that this anvil is actually one of the sides of your load one of the sides of your trailer the side that you're going to tie off and then stretch in the other direction imagine that this is the other side of your trailer and you pass around a hook or through a d-ring or whatever you want what you want to create is a situation where you've got a pulley to help you get mechanical advantage see that pulley right there that pulley is secured by these two half hitches so you can pull as hard as you want and then to get it loose you simply slack it and run that backwards out of that half hitch and backwards out of that half hitch and you're not gone it's just gone so remember it this way the sheepshank is in the knot you use to take slack out of a line and hold the slack as in tightening down a load as in pulling a ridgepole down a wall tent or over a tarp that's over your concrete work or tightening up you know one of the tent lines down to a peg that there are just a lot of times you need to tighten a line and hold hold it tight the other thing that it does is it makes you look like an operator it makes you look like somebody that understands mechanical advantage that's been around a while makes you look like an old salt and everybody likes that so this knot is for tying two ends of rope or webbing mule tape string I don't care it's for tying two ends of two different ropes or the two ends of the same rope or the same piece of webbing together it's a simple elegant little knots called the water knot doesn't look like much does it but it does not reduce the line strength you don't have to worry about it slipping and it centers itself on the line now I'll show you why that's important but can you see how that knot is centered on the line that's why I use it if I break when I break a string line when I have two pieces of line that I have to of string that I have to tie together because I don't want to waste a hundred-foot a line or something I'm getting short but I still want to stretch it down a form in the form 60 or 80 feet long and I don't want to just put a big overhand knot there or any kind of a big ugly series of half hitches because it all hangs off one side of the string and could push itself off the form and make my form crooked I use a water knot because it centers on the line you see that that water not kind of centers itself on that string so you can stretch that down the edge of your soffit or down the edge of your you know your slab on grade or wherever you're using your line and the worst you're going to be pushed off of straight is maybe half a line diameter which is not too much and it will never slip so the other piece of magic about a water knot is you might be pretty good with rope you might know how to tie a knot and a piece of rope and get some work done but if you walk up to a piece of webbing and want to tie a knot in it it's easy to be a little confused right so that's that is a cool thing about a water not that it will join two pieces of webbing perfectly so the knot that I use in construction more than any other is a knot and I don't even know the name of it how about that but over and over a carpenter has to pull a string line tight and hold it tight and when I say tight I mean really tight tight enough to pull the nail out tight enough to break the line you have to get a string line tighter it's no good you can't hold it tight with half hitches I don't care how many you stack on there so this is the easiest knot you're ever going to tie and the most useful if you're in construction I twist it five or six times seven times four doesn't seem to quite hold it now you can pull it with this one hand and take the slack up with the other and then just pull the bitter end back bingo look at that Seinfeld all over again okay that is a cool knot and then when you don't need that string anymore you do this bang it's loose you're out so let's let's make up a name for that knot shall we and you guys can correct me because I don't know but we're going to call it the fiddle string not because you can pull a string fiddle string tight you know I hope I hope this makes him sense to you okay no that's not you'll cut your string less and it'll last not only is it fast and comes out easy but you cut your string line or less yeah yeah okay so not only is it fast not only is it positive but if you get used to using this knot you'll have fewer and fewer reasons to ever cut your line because you can bust this knot on there throw it around the nail pull it tight throw the bit around around the back and go over to your next station you see that you can just take it right over and you can throw the larks head over here put it on your next nail Wham off to your next point and you haven't cut that string once I hope that these knots are useful if you want to actually learn how to tie them you can click on the links we've got the videos up that'll go through it in slow motion because everybody has to learn knots in slow motion but once you get it in your hands once you've done it I don't know maybe 10 or 12 times with your hands you're gonna be able to tie that knot under pressure in the dark if your life depends on it that's what you need to be is familiar enough with a knot that if you're in life or someone else's depends on it you know you can type oh it's gonna work and it's gonna make you somebody that people go to for solutions to the problems

Channel: Essential Craftsman

Views: 429,806

Rating: 4.8498049 out of 5

Keywords: rope, knots, must, essential, best, learn, scouts, sheepshank, bowline, larks, head, water, knot, tips, waterknot, truckers, hitch, clove, figure, eight, square, tie, string, practice

Id: mbMEG7OVfpg

Length: 11min 0sec (660 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 01 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/FortyPoundBaby]

Did they fuck up the editing at 9:30, or did they leave that in there for style? Totally doesn't fit the tone of the rest of the video.

[u/phasetwenty]

1. Bowline
2. Lark's head
3. Sheepshank
4. Water knot
5. "Fiddle string"

[u/[deleted]]

Doesn't even try to show you how to do them though

[u/mercham]

tautline hitch is my favorite/most handy knot. I use it often, and it's easy.

[u/BenTheFox150]

I really enjoyed his video on Vises. Made me want a vise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8DI2olAKPA

[u/PM_ME_YOUR_COCKTAILS]

Can confirm, I work construction. If you work in the carpentry or construction fields you Will be using these knots regularly. They’re also just dang handy any time, not just for craftsmen. You should learn them if you haven’t.

[u/[deleted]]

I wasn't even a boatswain's mate in the Navy, but man, I tied a lot of bowline knots. Glad that was his first goto. I still can tie one of these to this day, even though I never use it.

[u/Mentioned_Videos]

Other videos in this thread:

Watch Playlist ▶

VIDEO	COMMENT
(1) How-To Video #8: "One Handed bowline"(This Knot could save your Life!) (2) The KALMYK LOOP	+3 - bowline is also great because you can tie it around yourself with one hand in an emergency rescue situation: I sometimes prefer the kalmyk loop over the bowline, much easier to untie:
Ylvis - Trucker's Hitch [Official music video HD]	+1 - That's a different video.
(1) Running Bowline - How to Tie a Running Bowline - A Very Secure Noose ABoK #1117 A (2) Marlin Spike Hitch - One Knot Turns into Slip, Loop, Stopper Knot and More 😄 (3) Easy Trucker's Hitch For Ridgelines - Slip Knot Method (4) Taut Line Hitch - Midshipman's Hitch - Keeping a Tarp Ridgeline Tensioned - Adjustable Sliding Knot (5) Zeppelin Bend Knot - Securely Joining Two Ropes - Arborist/Rock Climbing Knot - How to Tie	+1 - If I had to pick 5: Running Bowline: Marlinspike Hitch: Truckers Hitch: Midshipmans Hitch: Zeppelin Bend:
Everyone Needs a Vise	+1 - I really enjoyed his video on Vises. Made me want a vise.

I'm a bot working hard to help Redditors find related videos to watch. I'll keep this updated as long as I can.

---

Play All | Info | Get me on Chrome / Firefox

[u/DaGhost]

how can i use these to tie my girl up