I realised that my way is wrong, your way is the standard way,
There is
NO "standard way" to test and measure the easiness or difficulty we can untie a knot ! AND, as I have mentioned many times, there is no "way", even considered as "
best practice", other than just puling and pushing, bending two different parts of the knot s nub relatively to each other, etc.- i.e., some manipulation of the knotted rope we are not able to quantify or measure.
To take the
various values of the "working" load of a rope, suggested by
various organizations for
various occupations and activities using ropes, and mis-use them as limits under which we should examine if a knot is easy to untie or not, is a <edited, by me...
>. I have seen "working loads" ranging from the 1 / 4 to the 1 / 15 of the MTB... There are many situations where the ropes and the knots happen to be loaded, accidentally or on purpose, with loads
approaching their MTB, so far beyond the recommended "working load" - and in
those situations the need for an easy-to-be-untied knot may be
even greater than in normal, everyday situations. To suggest that, iff a knot can be untied iff it is loaded with the 1 / 5 th of the MTB, it would be OK, is a DANGEROUS thing to do ! It reveals a total ignorance of what is happening in "dynamic" loading, or accidental loading, with loads far greater than those we had anticipated.
Of course, this stupid idea was nothing but an
ad hoc pseudo-invention of somebody who tried to saved a mediocre knot that has been occupying his brain cavity ( of unknown volume ) from time immemorial. I had only COMPARED the difficulty to untie this knot, with the easiness to untie the Zeppelin knot, or the bowline-like, PET knots. ( I have no sufficient experience with the
Double Dragon knot to have an opinion - I have tied it only a few times, and, until recently, I had confused it with another "similar" knot !
).
In boating, for example, one is confronted with such situations all the time ! Suddenly the mooring or the anchor line of another boat is entangled to yours, and both boats start moving towards a third one !
In general, one is seldom able to predict what will really happen in a outdoor activity - and ANY limits put on the "working" loading in advance will not help a jammed knot get untied !
It is true that we should better quantify the mostly subjective quality we describe as "easiness to untie", and one way would be to specify the different loads and loading patterns under which a jamming of a knot can occur. Some time ago I had proposed to sort the knots in five categories, defined by the maximal loading under which the knot can still be untied easily - whatever we decide that will mean. The 1 / 4, 1 / 3, 1 / 2, 2 / 3, 3 / 4 of the MTB of the rope ( to keep the ratios simple enough, and to compare the limit of the "easiness" according to a quantity/value/number of the rope, not of the knot ).
I am sure that almost ALL knots would be easy to untie, if the "working" load of the rope is sufficiently small, compare to its MTB... I imagine that NASA, for the space walk tethers connecting the astronaut with the space vehicle, uses "working loads" of 1 / 100 - under such "working loads", I am sure that there is not ANY knot, even worse than the fake, so-called "Zeppelin loop", which will NOT be "easy to untie" - so, why should we bother to measure it ?
Of course, another thing we have to consider is the softness or the stiffness of the rope. When we claim that a knot is "
easy to untie", we do NOT mean that it is "
easy-to-untie-iff-it-is-tied-on-boiled-spaghetti" !
ANY knot can be untied easily, if it is tied on a soft enough rope ! AND, if the rope is veeery soft, any knot can be untied by itself, without us !
So, when we say that a knot is "easy to untie", we mean "it is easy to untie if tied on whatever rope" - provided this rope is not made from Velcro !
So, the < edited, by me > idea, that we can claim a knot is "easy to untie" when it is easy to untie iff it is tied on soft enough ropes, is < edited, by me >.
A knot tyer ( actual, or would-like-to-be, it does not matter...) wants to make some $ ( dollars ) from a site ( pathetic or not, it does not matter ) of his - and he sell commercials, which are paid according to the number of clicks / visitors of the site. That is not sooo stupid - people visit much-much more pathetic sites, and even pay for their visits to them ! However, when he USES a public Forum, like this, to
advertise his own site, over and over again ( in almost ANY thread, he inserts references to the same pages of his web-site, again and again...) , that is starting to smell badly. And when he starts "INVENTING" new meanings, by twisting the meaning of words already in use by everybody, THAT is worse... AND when his pseudo-inventions are referring to SECURITY, and he claims that a knot is
easy to untie, even iff it is only "easy
to untie when loaded by the working load", THAT is dangerous ! When he will discover that in some other uses of ropes there are recommendations of "working loads" even smaller than the 1 / 5 th of the MTB ( like the 1 / 100 ? in space walking ...
), he will baptise each and every pathetic knot as "easy to untie", and secure ! And he will be able to gain more $ by this !
I am not sympathetic to the vagrant
knot sellers, not because of the occupation, but because of the low quality of their merchandise : most knotting sites and books are ruminating the same knotting myths - and, as we have seen, some of them are even producing new ones ! ( However, I am sympathetic to the difficulty of people, like Dan Lehman, who feel they have to defend them, somehow...
) This new myth, that a knot is easy to untie even if it is easy to untie only when loaded by a fraction of the MTB ( fraction not specified, as the "working load" in the various activities involving ropes vary...), is DANGEROUS - because security, in the broad sense, is related not only to slippage of a knot, but to the easiness of tying and untying it as well.
As I had said many times, the difficulty of untie-ness is only the last from a long series of disadvantages of the fake, so-called "Zeppelin loop". I will not repeat them here - the interested reader can "search" the words : fake, so-called, "Zeppelin loop", and read - BUT, what is FAR better, he can TIE this mediocre eyeknot, load it, and SEE for himself. Then, if he still wishes to
buy whatever knot-sellers
sell, he will have no one to blame except himself.
