Hey guys, I'm Nate welcome back to the studio today
we're going to be taking a look at something that while fairly basic is also extremely useful
We're going to show you how to tie six of the most useful knots that I know and what they're good for
For tying knots all you're gonna need is a piece or two of rope and we've got that so let's get started to make handling
a little bit easier, let's just cut off a piece that's I don't know eight feet long
There are hundreds or probably even
Thousands of types of knot that have already been used and named that all have their place
but these are the six knots that I found to be most useful in my life The first type of knot we're gonna learn to
make is called the bowline it's a good knot for making a strong stable loop at the end of a rope
To start with your bowline measure off whatever size loop you want at the end of your rope
with one hand holding the rope where you want your loop to start twist a circle by grabbing one section and
lifting it up away from yourself
Take the other end of the rope and thread it through the back of the small loop you just created
Wrap the short piece of rope around the back of the long piece of rope
Feed the short end of the rope around the long end and then back through the front of the smaller loop
At this point you should be able to grab these three parts of the rope with one hand and the long part of the rope
with the other and pull it tight if the small loop running around the long end of your rope hasn't tightened all the way
Just give it a tug on the big end of the loop
At this point unless you're using extremely slippery rope this will hold pretty much indefinitely
It's a very stable knot that will almost never give out even if it gets wet
or is in bad conditions
Another advantage of the bowline is even after it's been tied for a long time or put under a lot of stress it can usually
be undone fairly easily when you want it to
There's another way to tie the bowline that won't come in handy as often, but someday you might find
It useful and it's actually a way to tie it one-handed to demonstrate
Let's clamp our rope into this vise because I need something to hold on to the other end
There we go If I remember how to do this right?
Tada to tie the one-handed bowline
I have the long end coming all the way around my waist I'm
Gonna, hold the short end of the rope with a little bit of extra play at the top now
I'll drop my hand down on top of the long end and
twist it in a circle this forms the loop that we made when we were first tying our not
We now pass the short end of the rope behind the long end
Grab it and pull our hand down through the loop. We've created
Then with some tension added to the rope it pulls itself tight
Next knot
we're going to learn is called the clove hitch and this is a great knot for attaching a rope to a tree or branch or
any sort of pole we have here a pole in a vise and this is what we're going to tie our rope on to
For the clove hitch once again. We are going to work with a long end and a short end to make our clove hitch
It's best to give yourself enough extra rope that you can wrap around the pole once or twice without any problem
Start by wrapping the short end of your rope around the pole once and having it go underneath the long
end of the rope if you've got it on top of the long end of the rope you've done it wrong
Continue wrapping the short end of the rope around the pole, but don't pull it completely tight you want to leave some slack
With the short end wrapped back around you want to pass it over the long end of the rope and then
Under the loop you've just created around the pole
This knot will actually cinch itself a little bit tighter as you pull on it, which makes it great for attaching it to round poles
Like the bowline one of the nicest things about this knot is that after you're finished putting it under tension
You can usually get it to slip open very easily to retrieve your rope
Now it turns out that the clove hitch like the bowline also has a one-handed method of tying
it its usefulness is a little bit different because you end up with the entire knot which then has to be placed over the
post that you're trying to tie it to
So if you would just have access to the middle of a branch or pole or tree this way won't help you out very much
One advantage of it however is that you don't need to have access to the end of your rope the whole thing can be tied
Just in the middle to start have the rope hanging off of your pinky and thumb with it passing in front of your other three fingers
Twist your hand toward you so the Rope overlaps itself
You then want to loop your hand down underneath one side of the rope and grab the other side
At this point you need to slide your hand out from the bundle of rope wrapping around it
These two loops that I'm still holding on to
That's the knot if I drop those two loops over my post I can grab the ends of the rope and pull it tight now
the next knot we'll learn is called the taut line and it's also good for attaching a rope to a branch or a pole but
this one is very adjustable
and you can use it to tighten your line after you've tied it almost as though it had a ratcheting system to start off
Let's wrap our rope around our pole and leave ourselves about one foot of rope to work with at the end
to start off the short end of the rope
passes over the long end of the rope the short end of the rope then comes up through the loop and then
wraps all the way around the rope a second time
You can see we have the two coils going around the long end of the rope we then want to wrap our rope over those
two coils and the long end of the rope
down underneath and then through the loop. We've just made
When our knot is tightened it will securely grip onto the rope
Holding our rope attached to the pole if we add a little bit of slack though
We have the ability to slide our knot up and down the long end of the rope where ever we want it
This is a great knot if you're trying to hold a tarp or a tent or something similar
Nice and tight because you can tie the knot pull to remove any slack and then adjust the knot up the long end
Which will shorten your rope holding it pulled tight against your pole
Our next knot is called the Sheep shank and it's used to shorten a piece of rope when it's too long
But you don't want to cut it or when both ends are already tied to other things to start
we'll make three loops by grabbing our rope and twisting it clockwise
one
two
Three you can see we now have sort of a clover shape going on we have our first loop with the rope passing on top
We have our second loop with the rope passing on top
and we have our third loop with again the rope passing on top so the reason we twist it in the same direction every time
So we always have the end of our loop passing on top
We don't want to have one loop going the other direction so it starts on top and ends on bottom
That's incorrect now to tie our knot
We'll take this loop
Twist it a little bit more clockwise and grab the side of our middle loop we'll then do the same thing for the other side
Twist it a little bit clockwise reach through and grab the side of the middle loop
Now we pull the middle loop through our side loops
and then as we tighten down on the rope it will cinch up and hold itself together
We've now shortened our rope by a considerable amount
Let's see the difference here our rope is about eight inches long if we relax it
pop these middle loops out
Trying to just hold on to the same spot without letting go
We now have at least two feet of rope
and if you just make your middle loop even larger you take even more rope out of your middle our next knot is one
That's used for attaching the ends of two ropes together
Sometimes the rope you have is too long and you can use the Sheep shank, but sometimes your ropes aren't long enough
And you need to attach two of them together this next knot called the sheet Bend is good for that
I have here the ends of two ropes. You can see this is its own separate rope
You could actually use this for attaching two ends of the same rope together as well
But I'm attaching two different ropes to each other. We fold the end of our first rope over
Second rope gets passed up through the bottom
goes all the way around both parts of our first rope and
then passes through the loop in itself that it's created. It shouldn't pass back through the loop from the first rope
Pull that tight and we have a nice secure knot that will not let go
one thing to look out for is you want to be sure that both of the short ends are on the same side of the
rope if I hold the rope with the short end of our first rope facing down and
tie the second part of the rope the same way
You can see that the short ends of the rope are now on opposite sides from each other
This is not going to be quite as strong. You can see that the angle as we pull begins to slide more
one of the advantages of the Sheep Bended
not is that it can be very good for tying together two ropes of different thicknesses here
I've got our thicker rope and here I have a piece of thinner paracord
You can pull this tight and we have a strong connection between the two
The last knot we're going to show you today is possibly the simplest one, but it's still very useful
It's called the figure eight knot
The figure eight knot is the knot that you should be using most of the time when you tie an overhand knot
For reference an overhand knot is the most basic simple knot you can tie
Everyone knows how to tie an overhand knot they do it all the time pretzels are overhand knots and
while it's not a useless knot
It's really not good for all that much
most of the time an overhand knot is used to either stop a rope from fraying or to provide a
stopper so that the rope can't slide through a hole for both of those uses
I highly recommend using the figure eight knot instead
The figure eight knot is almost as easy to tie as the overhand knot and I think it works a lot better
To start simply pass the short end of the rope behind the long end of the rope and wrap it around
wrap the short
end of the rope behind itself and through the loop that you've just made as you pull the rope tight your knot is already finished
There you have it six of the most useful knots
I know if you've practiced these then when it comes time to use them you'll be able to do it without even thinking about it and it
will be a great time-saver
obviously there are hundred's of other knots that I haven't shown here and
dozens of ways to maybe even tie these
same knots that I didn't show this is just supposed to be a basic guide for knots that I actually use in everyday life
I know that this is a pretty simple project
But it is one of the most useful things that you could learn in an afternoon
Thanks for joining us for this video and remember to come gear yourself up with products and merch at thekingofrandom.com
see you there
Hey guys, it's grant here, I'm not in a position to be in these videos right now
But that's exactly why Nate's here Nate is the man he's got some incredible talent
and I think he could pretty much build anything so let him know in the comments what you want to see and he can probably
Make it happen