Welcome to another edition of Saturday Morning Home Repair Blogging, hosted once again by boatgeek. This is our weekly spot to talk about what’s going on in our homes. As Claude "The Man" said, it’s hard to be an activist when your plumbing isn’t working. So bring up a chair, pour the hot beverage of your choice, and join in. What are you working on this week?
Follow along after the jump to learn some useful knots...
For nearly every job, there’s a few really great knots for the job, a few that will get it done, and a lot that don’t work very well. The five knots below will get you through almost every situation you find yourself in. If you want, more, I encourage you to look up The Ashley Book of Knots. Mr. Ashley literally wrote the book, which you can find online. It’s still in print, for those Luddites who (like me) prefer paper to electrons. There are also several lovely instructional websites like this one that show how to tie these knots.
Before we get going, here’s a quick glossary:
Bitter end: The "tail" or loose end of a knot
Standing end: The end of the line that bears a load
Line: A piece of rope that’s in use. Technically, this only applies on a boat*, but it also makes you sound super-knowledgeable in the real world. (* Except the bell rope, but that’s because mariners are perverse about names).
We start with the bowline (below left), which is usually the first knot a new sailor learns. This is the best way to put a loop in the end of a line. It doesn’t slip and is easy to untie. You can tow a boat around all month with a bowline, and still be able to break the knot afterwards.
![](http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2530/4006554839_6789170740.jpg)
Our next knot is the sheet bend (above right), which is basically a bowline with the loop cut. This is the preferred general-purpose knot for tying two pieces of line together. As you can see from the picture, you can use it with lines of wildly different sizes. The sheet bend has the same advantages as a bowline. Why not use a square knot here? A square knot only works with two lines of the same size, is significantly weaker, and is more likely to slip, especially if you accidentally tie a granny knot instead of a square knot.
Now we move on to another common knot in two guises. On the left, you have the double half hitch, where the knot is tied to the standing part of the line. On the right is a clove hitch, where it’s tied to another object. Either way, this is a quick way to tie off a line temporarily. One nice feature of the double half hitch is that it can be tied under a light load. You can hold the tension on the line with one hand while you tie the knot with the other.
![](http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2634/4006555293_3ff2527096.jpg)
Onwards to two more exotic knots. On the right, we have the rolling hitch. This is a great tool to grab on to a line under tension. The knot is one-way, since it can slide towards the half hitch (up in this picture), but it will hold tension in the other direction.
![](http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2598/4007322088_5a32eb6f38.jpg)
On the left is the linesman’s loop, aka the alpine butterfly. You can tie this knot in the middle of the line without needing to get either end. The beauty of the linesman’s loop is that you can put tension on both standing parts of the line, or in either direction with one standing part and the loop. It’s also easy to untie. If you have time and a lot of line, you can make a rope ladder with a series of linesman’s loop.
So here are a few uses of some of these knots:
Covering a load. Start by attaching one end of the line to the trailer or truck bed. Lead the line back and forth over the load, finishing off with a double half hitch on the trailer frame.
Leveling a fence post. When we pulled down the old hedge and fence, the corner fence post fell out of true by quite a ways. There was a solid metal post a few feet away that we used to pull the old post back to true. Again, I put a bowline on the post that needed to be pulled into true. Between the two posts, I tied a linesman’s loop. The bitter end went around the metal post and back through the loop. This gave me about a 3:1 mechanical advantage as I pulled the post straight. Finally, once everything was level, I tied it all off with a double half hitch.
You can get an idea of the process in the picture below. The bamboo represents the wobbly fence post, and the flowerpot represents the solid post.
![](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3496/4007322948_b7df4f7211.jpg)
And finally, a little bit of political content. There is a knot called the Senator. It’s purpose? To take up space, weaving an inconveniently long piece of line into a shorter braid that’s easier to manage. When you’re all done, you undo the very end, and the whole braid unravels. Take that wherever you want.
![](http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2579/4007322540_cdc18997fe.jpg)
Extra credit for the serious student: the jug sling knot (#10 here). This is a critical piece of boating equipment, because you can stick a bottle neck in the "hole" in the middle, then use the loop to hang a bottle of the beverage of your choice over the side in the nice cool water. No ice needed!
Please also give some special mojo to our cat-herder-in-chief, CodeTalker. Without his work organizing this motley crew, we wouldn’t have content-filled diaries every week. If you have a topic to write up, please give him an email so he can fill up the schedule.