The Field Guide to Knots: How to Identify, Tie, and Untie Over 80 Essential Knots for Outdoor Pursuits

Introduction

Why This Knot Book?

Knot tying is an essential outdoor skill. Knots are indispensible to backpackers, climbers, boaters, and anglers. And anyone who spends time in the backcountry—including day hikers, birdwatchers, hunters, cross-country skiers, snowshoers, equestrians, and mountain bikers—should have basic knot-tying skills for everyday and emergency situations. And really, just about everyone has to tie stuff up on occasion, and doing it right makes the job quicker, easier, neater, and safer.

But there are already a lot of knot books out there, so what makes this one different? Three things:

1. It’s designed to allow you to identify most functional knots you’re likely to encounter in outdoor activities. That’s what makes the book a field guide.

2. The book explains how to untie each knot. That’s more important than it may seem. Whether you need to change a sail, reposition a loop on a climbing rope, tighten a sagging dining fly, or splice a broken tent pole, untying knots is often the first step. Doing it correctly will make the job go faster and may reduce damage to the rope.

3. It provides an efficient way to select the right knot for any job. Rather than making you read lengthy descriptions of dozens of knots to find one that’s appropriate, this book provides a quick overview of every knot at the beginning of each part, so you can quickly zero in on the one that best suits your needs.

Of course, the book explains how to tie the knots and includes alternate methods for a few of them. It also gives you the information you need to select the right kind of rope and it explains how to use it efficiently, and how to keep it in good condition. Good rope is expensive, and if you’re using it in situations where personal safety is at stake, you want to know you can depend on it.

How to Use This Book

Just as a field guide to birds is organized by categories (wading birds, perching birds, hawks, etc.), the knots in this book are organized into categories. Whether you need to untie an existing knot or select a new knot for a job, the way to begin is to identify the knot or define your requirement by general type—binding knots, hitches, loop knots, etc.—and then narrow the search to the specific knot. Under Types of Knots you will find information about the main categories of knots and what they’re used for.

Once you know the category of knot you’re looking at, or that you need to tie, turn to the part of the book that covers that category in detail. Each part begins with an identification key, consisting of photographs of every knot in the category, accompanied by a brief list of the knot’s common uses. You will also find pro-and-con comments that compare a given knot to others in the category, in terms of security, ease of tying or untying, and other need-to-know information. Each photo is keyed to the page where tying and untying instructions are found, along with a more detailed description of the knot and its uses.

Like any other skill, knotting has special terminology, but the lexicon is pretty small and easily learned. It is much easier to read and follow instructions that use precise, concise terms rather than long descriptions.

So be sure to read the first two sections of Part Two. As soon as you begin tying your first knots, these terms will all become familiar friends.

Knowing how to tie the right knot for every job is a useful—sometimes essential—outdoor skill. But it’s also fun, gratifying, and very impressive when you can quickly rig a safety line for a climber, lash a canoe onto a car, or put up a tarp that stays up while others are struggling and flailing with tangled lines and knots that don’t hold. Start by learning just a few knots in each category, and you may find yourself coming back for more.

What Knots Are Included?

Of literally thousands of knots and similar ropework devices known for many purposes, there are 87 (including variations) in this book. How did we decide which to include? Well, this is a practical guide for outdoors enthusiasts, and the knots here are practical in the sense that each of them work well for a number of outdoor situations, and they’re relatively easy to learn, tie, and remember.

Of course, this book includes knots in all the main categories, including stopper knots, binding knots, loop knots, bends, and hitches. Knots that are designed to make up bundles or packages (binding knots) are not appropriate for making connections between two objects with a section of rope (as when tying an anchor line, for which you’d want a hitch). And within categories, there are knots that are fine-tuned to more specific tasks—for example, loops that are adjustable versus loops with a fixed size, or knots that trade off ease of tying for greater security.

Other categories include lashings, whippings, seizings, and coils. Some of these are not knots per se, but they all involve knots and they are all essential ropework skills for the outdoors.

Just as backpackers select gear that serves more than one purpose in order to reduce weight in their packs, we prefer rope skills that can be used in many ways, to avoid filling our overburdened memory banks with a lot of single-purpose information. Most of the knots chosen are practical for a variety of outdoor activities, equally useful for camping, boating, climbing, fishing, wilderness living, and survival. For the same reason, there are no knots that are purely decorative. Decorative knotting is a fine hobby, but that simply isn’t an objective of this book.

Most of the knots here are primarily for tying in twisted-or braided-fiber ropes. A few of them also work well in monofilament fishing line, webbing, leather straps, or bungee cord, but none of them are limited to these materials. None of them are appropriate to wire rope.

Finally, all the knots here can be tied without tools and without unlaying (i.e., untwisting) the strands or undoing the braids from which the rope is constructed. The only special material introduced is whipping thread, which is used to prevent the ends of rope from unraveling, and the whipping and seizing techniques shown do not require the use of a needle or sailmaker’s palm.

Why So Many Knots?

It’s one thing to say that a binding knot is appropriate for tying up a package and a hitch is a way to tie two things together with a section of rope in between. It’s another to understand why there are different knots for different tasks. Even the simplest knot has more than a dozen characteristics that determine how well it will work in a given application:

Complexity: How many steps are involved? How difficult is it to learn and remember?

Ease of tying: Quite separate from its complexity, how difficult or time-consuming is it to tie?

Ease of untying: After it’s been tightened, can it be untied with ease?

Security: Will the knot stay tied if the rope is pulled even tighter? Will it stay tied if the knot isn’t tied very tight? Even if the knot remains tied, will it slip? (If it’s a loop knot, will the size of the loop change? If it’s a hitch, will it shift relative to the object it’s tied to?)

Security under shock load: Will it remain secure if the rope is subjected to a sharp jerk? How about if it’s shaken repeatedly, like on a flag halyard?

Adjustability: After it’s tied, can the knot be made tighter or looser? Larger or smaller?

Adaptability to various sizes and materials: Can it be tied effectively in both thin and thick rope? In flat materials? With ropes made from both natural and synthetic fibers? How will these differences affect its security, ease of untying, etc.?

Ability to bind tight: Can the knot be tied tightly to or around another object? (Think about needing another thumb in order to tie up a package tightly.)

Ability to bind loose: Can the knot be tied securely but loosely around another object? (Think about a loop in the end of a rope that you might drop over the top of a post, but that you do not want to tighten around the post when you pull the rope tight.)

Retention of rope strength: All knots weaken rope, but some not as much as others.

Amount of rope required: Some knots require a lot; others not so much.

Bulk: How big is the finished knot? Will it interfere with the movement of the rope or the object to which it’s tied?

How many ends are required? Some knots can be tied only if both ends of the rope are free. Others require only one end, and some can be tied on the bight, in the middle of the rope with neither end free.

With so many variables to consider, it’s not surprising that practitioners of different trades and outdoor pursuits created knots that combined exactly those characteristics suitable to the task at hand.

General Guidelines for Tying Knots

None of the knots here are particularly complicated, but even so, it’s pretty easy to get them wrong if you make a simple mistake, like passing one part of the rope over another when you should be passing it under. Relying on both text and images, carefully follow instructions step by step, paying close attention to over versus under, left versus right, working end versus standing part, and the direction of loops (i.e., clockwise or counterclockwise, overhand or underhand). These terms are explained under Working Terms and Basic Shapes.

If a knot doesn’t come out right, untie it completely and start from the beginning, making sure each step is done exactly as shown.

Sometimes a correctly tied knot won’t look like the photograph, in which case, it will simply need to be faired, i.e., worked into shape by some careful rearrangement. See Finishing Knots for directions on finishing and fairing knots.

All knots can be tied upside down or as mirror images of the examples. When learning how to tie a knot upside down from the way it’s pictured, you can simply turn the book upside down and follow the photos in the normal order. To tie a knot that’s a mirror image of the photo (in which left and right are reversed), you can view the pictures in a mirror. Remember that when you do such a reversal, some but not all of the following directional pairs may need to be reversed as well: left/right, up/down, over/under, overhand/underhand, and clockwise/counterclockwise.

There’s more than one way to tie most knots to produce identical results. The choice of an alternate method may be merely a matter of preference, or it may be dictated by the situation. This book provides alternate methods for a few knots, but different approaches may work just as well for almost any of them.

Rope comes in many varieties and sizes, and some knots don’t work well with all kinds of rope. Twisted (laid) rope kinks more readily than braided rope if looped in the wrong direction. Large-diameter rope may not take kindly to being bent into a small radius. Some synthetic ropes are too slippery to hold certain knots securely. And ropes of greatly different sizes or different materials may not knot together easily or effectively. See Buying Rope to learn how to select rope that’s appropriate to your needs.

It’s one thing to tie a knot with the book in front of you on the kitchen table—it’s another to tie it when you need it in a real-world situation. The key to truly learning a knot is memorization through repetition and practice. After you’ve tied a knot a few times using the book, try doing it from memory. Then try again in an hour, and again the following day. With the exception of the simplest knots, chances are that you may forget the procedure. But tie that knot from memory every day for a week, and you’ll own it. Then, when you need a knot fast, you’ll be able to do it confidently and correctly, regardless of conditions.

Safety

Personal safety in outdoor activities can depend upon good rope and well-tied knots. Climbers carefully inspect their ropes and habitually check each other’s knots to guard against mistakes. If you don’t have access to experienced backup, it’s important to check your own knots scrupulously before relying on them. If you’re unsure about a particular knot, it may be safer to substitute one in which you have total confidence, even if it might be less convenient.

Broken fibers indicate that this rope is well past its useful life for any purpose where safety is at stake

The condition of the rope itself is also of key concern. Just sitting on a shelf, almost all ropes will deteriorate with age, and wear accelerates with use and exposure to the elements. Inspect any rope inch by inch before using it in a safety-related application. Signs of excessive wear or age include: fraying, permanent kinks, discoloration, broken or melted fibers, reduced diameter, the cover sliding over the core, and areas where the angle of the lay or braid changes.

The safe working load of most rope is printed on the package. It’s usually considerably lower than the breaking strength

Breaking strength is the load at which a rope breaks under laboratory conditions, when brand new and under steadily increasing load. This figure may not be readily available to the consumer, but working load—the maximum load to which the manufacturer recommends the rope be subjected—is usually printed on the packaging, or on the reel in stores where rope is sold by the foot or meter.

The working load is usually in the range of 15–25 percent of the breaking strength. This may seem overly cautious, but in fact it’s merely prudent. Most rope becomes weaker when wet, and many knots reduce the strength of rope by half, so as soon as you tie a knot, the rope’s margin of safety (the difference between its actual breaking