The guys I was speaking with about the reef
knot in Brittany got another bout of head
shaking when I introduced
the notion of
bowline not being safe for the reason of it being
prone to
capsize/collapse/
get spontaneously
undone / whatever.
This time I had been quite prudent. The very first thing I
said was
that it is not my personal
opinion,
that it was what some persons were stating with great
assurance
on some
forums,
and that I would like their opinion based on their daily
experience with it.
Gist of it is : short round of interrogation among
them :
Result of the poll : they have yet to see a bowline coming undone or to
hear about one
having done that.
By the way : these days I see bowlines that are visibly 'permanent
fixture'.
In my youth I was taught to make it only a "temporary" loop.
One just
for the
duration of use. Rope has to rest too, and not stay
'deformed'
needlessly ;
what is the good sense of leaving an unused
knot in
a cordage ?
Do you leave hammer, saw, chisel and screwdriver lying around waiting
for the next use and
came astonished at seeing them cause of accident
or
subject to degradation ?
One old guy on the quay in Concarneau commercial fishermen harbour said
to me :
" if you really fear it to become undone just make it
"double" ".
I asked him to show me what he call "double" : is
just passing
the tail again .
Example is not 'set' but left well 'relaxed'. Diagram.
This is what the US Coast Guard has to say :
http://216.18.138.197/knots/Bowline_Knot.asp "The bowline
knot is a versatile knot and can be used anytime a temporary eye is
needed
in the end of a line.
It also works for tying two lines securely together, though there are
better knots for this. An advantage of bowlines is that they do not slip or jam
easily. "
my emphasis on their words.
"OUTSIDE" Bowline is inferior to "INSIDE" Bowline : ANOTHER MYTH FROM COMMERCIAL
FISHERMEN
POINT OF VIEW
BASED ON PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE :
I asked here and there in Brittany :
well, they usually do the
"inside tail" one but do not consider the "outside tail" one inferior
on any point
and will use an "outside" if "outside" it is that they find.
More a question of "standardising" what knot are on board and
may be of ease in making
it induced by the handedness of the
knotter. ( ? question
mark here and not : it is
handedness belonging to knot tyer and certainly
not quite improperly to the knot )
I discovered the
following some weeks after
writing :
"The
standard Bowline was selected
for the test, but the Cowboy or Dutch Bowline was
tested to see if
there was a
difference. The numbers were almost identical."
It seems that 'oral
tradition/transmission'
from Brittany is vindicated. Forum transmission
should be 'studied critically' and taken with a hefty dose of salt.
SHADOW-TANGLE COMPARISON ON BOWLINE
A
localised shadow (shadow-tangle) is common to the "inside
tail", "outside tail" and
"Lapp" Bwl
( not to take in account the FALSE outside tail which is based on the
granny )
Shadow of whole knot discriminate between 2 groups and adding the
nature of crossings
everywhere
discriminate four knots.
PROPOSED EXPERIMENTS TO DO WITH BOWLINE
To those who think that a bowline is readily capsizing ("at
the brush of a shroud" as I have
read - I would check the knot tyer
qualification! ) or who
think that a 'left'/'outside' is worse
than a 'right'/'inside' I would
like to ask that they
just go and do these little experiments
with a right and a
left
bowline and draw their own conclusions based on something else
than hearsay or 'eyeread'.
Of course in
many case capsizing an unload knot is quite easy, problem is
that it may be
not so easy with a loaded one.
I think that schematics are self-explanatory.
Green arrow is for the tensioning load you will apply to the knot.
Blue arrows are for the testing loads applied.
You may even do it - less spectacular of course - with a
precision dynamometer and
3mm cordage and small loads of 4 to
5
kilograms, just to get the 'proportion' of force you
have to use to
make it capsize.
I AM NOT SURE THESE BOWLINE ARE CONSIDERED TO
BE
AN
EASILY
'COMING UNDONE' KNOT BY THOSE WHO MADE THEM.
Of course there is always the guy who is not
anxiety prone about the quality of his mooring
(I have to
say that this was a temporary mooring, just for the time
needed
to
put the day catch on the quay)
Do you think that this bowline is there since the
last rain ( it rain very often in Brittany )
and that it gives sign of
capsizing ? or
that one ?
May be that
one has every sign of being a knot that
capsize easily ?
Do you think that it is because it can easily undo
itself that they do not even take time to
seize it ? Why lose time about it since it will be undoing
itself the next minute ?
Of course silly me, it is the explanation.
Just look at this
wreck ( has been laying there for at least the last 10 or 15
years) on the
right bank of la
rivière d'ETEL in south Brittany.
In it I found that bowline,
there since all that time, wind, rain, frost, sun...
Do you think it give any sign of coming undone ?
spontaneously ? Just a depressed Bwl
with suicidal tendencies ?;-)
A TEASINGQUESTION / ANSWER
( for some not taking any
liking to the H&L, not to say an, outright dislike/distrust
)
This is just to try to show :
- - the utility of the H & L concept
to regroup knots on the logical level of 'diagram'
- - its limitation once you get to the logical level of 'knot in the
rope'
To differentiate between knots regrouped ( still hoping about
knots cladistics ) under
one particular
H&L STRuCTuRe one has to go beyond that strictly 'anatomical'
concept to get to the 'physiology', that is how the knot 'function',
not how 'it is built'.
In fact under this common (as in shared) H&L
STRuCTuRe
that make them
'equivalent'
to each other are hiding two different 'knot
physiology" .
To decide which one you are seeing
you need to be WEnd / SPart ( Working End /
Standing Part ) oriented as
here
or there,
still they have a common STRuCTuRe
( this typography is to
differentiate the H&L's from the
usual meaning(s)
given to 'structure'.)
FREQUENTLY INSPECT YOUR CORDAGES AND DISCARD AT FIRST SIGN
OF
ATTRITION.
MAY BE !
Well I am not all that sure that the guy was
listening in the classroom during this lesson. This
one must have been absent
too. (
Cannot resist to steal from Dan_Lehman : this is what
he, very aptly
IMO, name "Velcro
phase of decay".)
ALWAYS 'STOP' OR 'SEIZE' YOUR CORDAGES .
It depends !