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wrote:
Its strange, but I see very few sailors who know how to tie knots as
most of their cordage already has mechanical terminations or pre-made
loops. Even many vertical cavers who I would really expect to know
their knots have no idea of how to do them as most of them now use
mechanical ascenders and I have seen some horrific means to tie off
rapelling ropes. Do rock climbers even need to know many knots these
days?
My14 yr old son has no interest at all in why one knot works better
than another and I have taught my wife a bowline so many times I have
simply given up. I tend to think that unless you know why one knot is
better, how to tie them makes no diffeence to you.

It's the untying that makes the difference, Billy.

Some knots can be released under load, some only when slack, and
some hardly at all, if they have been pulled hard.

That's the rub, as we say.

Have you ever seen what can be done with a crochet? Granny used to
say she could crochet a suspension bridge if she had the time.

We call it the commissionaire's knot, brailling up, or making
tiddely. It technically ain't a knot until you pull the end
through, it's just a turn on a bight.

How do you define a knot? Must an end pass through, or what, as
opposed to a siezing or a bend or a jamb, etc? Surely there is a
mathematics to describe knots, I think I saw it in Scientific
American, but not sure.

Terry K