Some excellent knot pages
- Roper's Knot Page. (from 1990's, still maintained)
- http://www.manitouboats.com/blog/knots-yeah-more-knots-with-video/ (2012). Reallly nice page with youtube videos of bowline, clove hitch, fisherman's knot. Look at those rather my very old and choppy videos below.
Some useful knots
Inspired by a sailing trip with Ken McCormack, I put together this page that holds instructions on tying some useful knots. (This page was created around 1993 and has not really changed since then.)
Some terminology: A hitch is a knot that ties a line onto something else. A bend is a knot that ties together two lines.
Here are the knots
- Bowline: This knot makes a really secure loop in the end of a line. It is supposed to be the mainstay knot for sailors. MPEG movie. (217kB)
- Sheet Bend: This knot is great for two lines together. It is supposedly much better than the square knot that we all know and is tied almost the same except for the last step. MPEG movie. (150kB)
- Clove Hitch: This knot is great for tying a line onto a post. The movie shows how to tie it when the top of the post is open; in that case it is a simple operation of flipping a loop over the post a couple of times - really quick. MPEG movie. (120kB)
- Tautline Hitch: This knot is great for tying a line onto a post when you want to get tension on the line, e.g., for tying up a volleyball net. It makes a one-way hitch: the knot will not slip when there is tension on it but you can slide it up and down by manually pushing on it. MPEG movie. (314kB)
In some of the movies it is hard to make out what goes over and under what, sorry about that. You can really only learn these knots by tying them yourself many times, spaced over a period of months. Otherwise you (or at least I) forget very quickly the ordering. I would suggest checking out many other excellent knot sites for step-by-step instructions.