...easy to tie, easy to check...
Easy to tie, perhaps - because the last segment of the Tail retraces the path of the returning eye leg. However, I do not find it easy to check / inspect, not at all ! The "back" side of the knot is very nice, with this pair of adjacent rings ( the two "low" collars ) around this pair of adjacent and parallel straight lines ( the last segment of the Tail and the returning eye leg). Unfortunately, the "front side" looks ( to my eyes ) a real mess, with THREE lines crossing each other at one point - a triple "kink" ! Especially the Tail, before it makes it final U-turn and becomes parallel to the returning eye leg, jumps over the eye leg of the Standing Part in a very oblique = unstable and ugly angle.
With the rather soft braided ropes you use, you can squeeze the lines, flatten them, and make those kinks look less pronounced. Tied on stiff, uncompressible kernmantle ropes which retain their round cross section, the kinks can not be smoothened out, and the nub can not take the compact form shown in your pictures. When the lines cross each other at very oblique angles, they can not "bite" each other hard and deep, so the one can not remain stable, canalized into the groove formed on the surface of the other. This means that they are more free to move sideways relatively to each other, so the knot is not very stable at their mutual crossing point. ( I am glad you did nt post it at reply#75...
)
To post #112:
I, too, like the secure way the tail is squeezed in between the two parallel legs of the collar, and them stems out of them, at right angles - but not anything else. I am afraid. In particular, the "lock", the last overhand knot, is placed too low, almost outside the rest of the knot. More important is the almost one rope diameter around which the tail is forced to turn, in order to tighten the overhand knot, in both loops. This is because, although the lines it goes around are two, the one is placed "under" / lower than the other, so the Tail makes a sharp turn around the (lower) one only of them. I suspect that the knot will remain secure, because the tail is already locked in between the two legs of the collar, but that the final overhand knot will remain slack most of the time - that is, it will look like it is redundant. One would have to pull the tail from time to time. in order to make this overhand knot as compact as possible, and, in doing this, the almost one-rope-diameter turn would be an obstacle. Stiff ropes are more like vertebrates, not molluscs !
I don't see anything wrong with it, I find very easy to untie. she don't look bad at all.
There is nothing
wrong with it, and it is not
bad at all, but I believe you wish something more than negations of negatives !
Although the lines meet each other at right angles. mostly - which is always a good thing, re. security -, and although there are no sharp one-rope-diameter turns anywhere, and although one can even say that there is almost
a pattern of braided / interweaved lines there, to my eyes this thing still looks more like hastily
knitted than meticulously
knotted... I do not doubt that it can be untied very easily, because, usually, this pattern of over/under lines, crossing each other at non-oblique, almost right angle angles, is a sign of a very secure knot, which will "lock", and will block any further inner movement and shrinkage within it long before it becomes too compact and rock-solid - that is. long before it can possibly jam, to any degree. However, this
pattern is not as clearly implemented as I would had wished it to be - so, to my mind, the original beautiful Lee s locked bowline is still a much better knot. Perhaps I would need some time to digest it a little more, but, for the time being, I can feel that it is not my cup of tea.
