Rope and twine are both very useful tools for camping, sailing, and many other outdoor activities. For the most part to be able to use them effectively, you need to know how to tie them together and to objects you want to secure or move. You can use ropes to secure loads on your truck, trailer, RV, boat, ATV, UTV, or side-by-side. You can use ropes and twine for guy lines on tents and awnings and to tie things to your pack or keep your sleeping bag or tent from unrolling in storage and transit. You can use ropes to move heavy objects. Pulley systems are especially helpful in moving heavy objects as they can provide a mechanical advantage. Basically that means with a pulley your can lift or move heavier objects. To do so means you have to pull the rope 2 or more times the distance you are moving the object. To move a 100 # load 1 foot with a single pulley attached to the load you would have to apply 50# of force for 2 feet. By the way, a fixed pulley doesn't add mechanical advantage, it only changes the direction of the pull, which is sometimes very useful. A pulley attached in the middle of the rope so it moves with the load adds mechanical advantage. To calculate mechanical advantage count the number of ropes attached to the pulley(s) that move with the load. In any case, the ropes will need to be fastened securely. For this you need to know how to use knots and hitches. You also need to know some basic rope terminology.
Rope terminology: basically a rope has two ends, the standing end (which is the long middle part of a rope not in the knot) and the working end (which is the part in the knot). The working end is also sometimes called the tail. A bight is a bend in a rope that does not cross back over itself. A loop is a bend in a rope that does cross back over itself. Knowing these terms will be helpful in understanding how to tie knots and hitches.
Knots and hitches are often thought by novices to be interchangeable or just subtle variations of the same thing but there are technical differences. Knots hold their form on their own. Hitches fasten around an object. Without an object, a hitch does not keep its form. Knots connect two ropes or two parts of a rope together. Hitches connect a rope to an object.
There are several commonly used knots and hitches that can be useful for camping and sailing. Most are fairly easy to learn to tie. There are many Youtube videos you can view to teach you how to tie knots so in this post I will mostly identify knots I have found useful and let you use Youtube to learn how to tie them. And, yes, I realize they say there are no ropes on sailboats (only lines, sheets, and halyards). However, lines, sheets, and halyards are all made of rope so it is reasonable to talk about tying knots in ropes on sailboats as well as when camping.
Initial learning is only the first step. In order for knots to be useful you will need to practice them until you can tie them easily without giving it a lot of thought. Some knots have little memory aids, like the rabbit, hole and tree used for bowlines, but they may or may not be useful. I tried to learn the bowline, including its silly rabbit/tree memory trick way back when I was in Boy Scouts. I finally learned how to tie it when I became a volunteer firefighter a few years ago. But it wasn't until I got a sailboat and needed to use it frequently that I finally mastered it enough to be comfortable tying it.
Here is my list of common useful knots. Click on the link for each name in the descriptions below for a Youtube to learn how to tie it.
- Overhand Knot
- Square knot
- Sheep bend
- Bowline
- Figure 8 knot
- Taughtline hitch
- Half hitch
- Clove hitch
- Cleat hitch
- Stopper Knot
On overhand knot is about the simplest of knots. It is the first step in tying the bow knot on your shoes. It is not a very secure knot but it is useful as a safety knot to secure the loose end of a rope after tying another knot. A Safety Knot doesn't hold any load, it simply secures the end of the rope so it doesn't get caught on something or come loose. An overhand knot is easy to untie.
The square knot is useful for joining two ropes of the same size. It is kind of like two overhand knots stacked on top of each other but you have to make sure each end goes the right way each time you wrap the ropes around each other. When it is properly tied a square knot looks like two inter-locking loops. A square knot holds pretty well but not well enough to be used on life safety line.
Sheep bend is primarily used to join ropes of two different sizes together.
Bowline is used to make a secure loop in the end of a rope. It is often used by sailors to secure a line or halyard to a sail or to tie a docking line to a pier. It can be tied around a tree or other stable object as an anchor point for rope systems or around tools to hoist them to a roof.
Figure 8 knot is another knot that is useful for making a loop in a rope. There are several varieties of figure 8 knots including a simple figure 8, a figure 8 follow-through, and a figure 8 on a bight.
Taughtline hitch is a great knot for tent campers and for securing awnings on RVs and loads on trucks and trailers. It has two distinct advantages. It allows a kind of mechanical advantage to help tighten the rope and it is fairly easy to adjust if the rope needs to be tighter or looser. A variation of it is also know as a "truckers haul" or "trucker's hitch". When I first started dirt biking I didn't have any tie downs so I had a trucker friend show me how to tie a trucker's hitch and it worked really well. Having the mechanical advantage to help cinch loads down tight is a very real advantage. Here is a nice video on using it as a guyline hitch for tents and awnings. The taughtline hitch does not use any pulleys for mechanical advantage -- it uses a loop in the rope as a pulley. Doing a lot of pulling on that loop may cause the rope to wear and weaken but for how it is normally used it should last a long time. If you see your rope beginning to fray where the two ropes rub together, replace the rope before it fails.
A half hitch is essentially the first step in tying a square knot. It is usually used to secure the end of a rope after tying another knot or to guide a rope, such as when it is used around the handle of a tool to hold it in place while lifting it up onto a roof or up a ladder, with the head of the tool secured by another knot or a clove hitch.
A clove hitch is used to attach a rope to a ring, hook, or object by taking two turns of rope around the object and passing the ends under both turns to form two half hitches.
A cleat hitch is used to secure a docking line to a cleat on the dock or on a boat. A properly tied cleat hitch holds securely but can be easily unfastened when the time comes. There are many Youtube videos that tell you how to tie a cleat hitch, but the in the link at the beginning of this paragraph by Captain Tom I have found to be the best. A common mistake when tying a cleat hitch is to wrap the line around the cleat too many times. If you follow Captain Tom's directions you can always form a secure cleat hitch that is also easy to undo when it is time to cast off. And it looks good, like you know what you are doing! A properly tied cleat hitch looks like a figure 8.
A stopper knot is used to keep a line from pulling back through pulleys. A lot of people use other knots such as a figure 8 or even a simple overhand knot as a stopper knot, but this one is more secure and yet is very easy to tie. The video shows how to use it as a stopper knot along with another knot on a climbing rope but you can tie it alone as a stopper on a loose rope. In a way it is kind of like a simple overhand knot but using two initial loops instead of one.
Avoid "knife knots". Really tight knots are sometimes called "knife knots", because you need a knife to undo them! Sailors often have a "marlin spike"on their rigging knives to aid in loosening tight knots instead of cutting the rope but it is always better to avoid getting knots so tight you can't undo them by hand, mostly by using the right knots in the first place.
If you want to learn more knots, check out Corporal's Corner on Youtube. He has a number of videos on useful knots.
Knotty but nice!
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