I watch these “nature survival” YouTube videos a lot. It’s my “comfort content” as I’ve learned to call it. They always seem to be pretty good at knots. I’ve never learned knots. I thought I should.
So a few weeks back I spent a weekend studying up. Articles, videos, and some paracord I bought from Amazon a day prior.
It’s pretty interesting! I walked away from that much more curious than I was at the start. As it turns out, there are some basic rules around knot tying and a lot of language that makes me think there’s something very simple underlying lots of it that people seem to talk around.
Knots in the Boy Scout sense are much different from mathematical knots (something I’ve had to explain to a friend of mine who got too excited about my interest in this). It mostly concerns friction. You’ll want to look into physical knot theory when doing research on it, differentiated from the sans-physical knot theory.
A “good” knot is one that is easy to undo, quick to make, and strong for its purpose. It should resist being undone when used intentionally and come apart easily when specific simple forces are applied to parts of it.
An example of this is adding a “bight” to any knot, such as a trucker’s hitch or a bowline. A bight is a piece of doubled-up rope that acts as a quick-release to undo a knot. It’s usually not in the way of where friction is applied, so you can pull on the knot strongly without loosening the bight itself.
You can quickly get the hang of how knots deal with the direction of applied forces and build a mental framework for good knots and weak knots. I haven’t found a good guide for this yet, but I’m sure it exists somewhere.
Researching more on knots, I was reminded of an article I saw from Hacker News on granny knots. It’s basically a way not to tie your shoes. As it turns out, I am not guilty of this sin, but I still wasn’t tying my shoes optimally.
Ian’s secure shoelace knot changed everything for me.
It’s a dead-simple variation on the classic shoelace knot. It unfortunately blocks you from doing the world’s quickest knot, but I never learnt this technique anyway. What you get from the secure variant are shoelaces that simply will not come undone by traditional means.
This sounds no different from the standard double knot, which many people tie once frustrated by laces coming undone, but these are traditionally difficult to undo intentionally.
By our earlier definition, the standard double knot is “bad”. It is strong in the way it’s meant to be, but it resists being undone simply. It’s a bit of a hassle getting it apart - a compromise some people don’t enjoy making.
In contrast, the secure shoelace knot makes one subtle observation - knots are strongest when “balanced”. You don’t need to tie 2 knots, you just need to balance the first one.
Once you learn the square knot, this becomes obvious. It’s deceptively strong. A square knot, however, is also not easily undone. This can be solved with a bight. 2 bights, really.
And that’s the secure shoelace knot.
It’s a square knot with 2 bights. The regular Ian knot is quite similar already, but is unbalanced. To balance it, put both “bunny ears” through the hole instead of just one. It comes apart just as easily as it normally would.
I’ve been teaching this knot to anyone who I accidentally mention my knot weekend to. Inevitably, the question comes: “Did you learn anything useful?”
Well, I can tie a slip knot and a square knot now, but here’s something that will blow your socks off!