My question sought an answer, and not gratuitous parroting.
I had not understood what exactly was the specific question you are referring to, that I failed to answer.
The question is how it was you came to your assertion about strength.
The answer seems to be that you read Chisholm's article, not that you
(nor he) had done any actual testing or knew of such testing results
that would support your assertion.
...because I have to hang again my two 1953 Gunlocke wooden chairs from the central heating pipe
on the ceiling of my kitchen, persuade again my son to sit with me on them,
her ["her"?!] mother to take pictures while she is cooking, etc.
This is the environment of my "tests", and I have said it explicitly.
No, I don't think that you EVER said anything like this,
and it most certainly rates a picture, or several!!!
Not least of all (but maybe not most) to show what is being
tested by this homespun endeavor.
(My standing in a pulley is far less *colorful*, but likely far
more forceful.)
That is exactly what happened with the "Sidewinder" during my (few and superficial) tests.
Here's another rub : your
"sidewinder" appears to be my name
taken for your
treble harness bends --that's an unwanted confusion
(you "said" that you found my knot too convoluted to tie, yes?).
Because I am no qualified knot tester by any means, and I can do nothing else than
reading other people s opinions and tests, and rely on them. I have not done any scientific tests on any knot,
and I do not want to do, and I do not intend to do !
Whoa, what happened to the two-chairs-sitting from the ceiling
--did you do that (for what purpose), or not?
...while I retain my right to have my opinion, however naive, and publish it.
And I am glad that there are many other people here that are just like me, and do the same I do.
The article I have read and I have quoted sounds pretty informative and explanatory to my ears.
I am not qualified to argue with it.
Here I submit you go wrong : it is of no benefit to have a bunch
of uniformed opinions floating around, which either take some
effort to scrutinize and find wanting of basis, or just ignored.
That is
noise of the sort lowering the
signal-to-noise ratio --it wastes
time & resources. You should not regard that article as informative,
as it gives no seeking of empirical results to support the conjecture;
it is shooting from the hip. You are certainly qualified to read that
and find that basis missing; you should have asked
How did he come
to these conclusions --did he break knots and examine them? --did he
find such experimental basis in others' testing? , to which the answer
is "no".
Beyond this, you of course have tied and examined
bowlines --i.p.,
in the question of capsizing, seen in some mooring lines of trawlers
as I showed. Can you really look at this knot and believe what
Chisholm asserts about it being so deflected at the point of entry,
his "stem" & "point X", that it will break there (and as a relatively
low load, given such very slight deflection (if any!) there)?! I
should think NOT. That collar, which is so easily pushed back
after heavy loading, nevertheless causes the knot to break (before
any other weakening of it by other curves does so)?!
I think that alone only need sit in your chair, neverminding
a suspension of belief by suspension of chair, to analyze this
assertion and find it highly dubious.
If I find other articles on the same subject, I will read them too.
But you might like to consider this draft thesis:
personal.strath.ac.uk/andrew.mclaren/KatherineMilne2004.pdfwhich points to an entirely different part of the
bowline (and
double bowline) for failure; pity she didn't think to use marker
strands in the rope! --a still camera could capture that, before
and after, and thread & still camera are surely less dear than
a high-speed camera.
But where are your "tests" ? ...
Why you do not argue directly with this writer [who] reports the "baseless conjectures" ...
I should put up some few photos of broken bits of
3-strand knotted rope, to show the evidence of the
break coming on the strand (it is often a single strand
that breaks, and then testing is arrested) leading to the
concave part of a bend, a place of great compression.
Conceivably, different materials exhibit different behavior;
it is more *traceable* in the laid rope, by following the
broken strand's now-vacant groove, than in braided rope,
esp. where there is more devastating or complete breakage.
With marker threads in both a broken token AND a paired
unbroken one, one has some chance to assess, from its
position among the *rubble*, where it lay on breakage.
(Or even in a single token, if one has photographed the
knot with its markers in high-tension position, the post-mortem
can be instructive.)
It has been several years, now, since corresponding with
Chisholm, and I forget why that ran dry --likely one or both
of us going in other directions. I still have comments about
a ski-patrol knots survey he did, which was a refreshing look
into "the wild" and what was actually done, what was believed.
--dl*
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