... use the method that has been around for thousands of years.
Knots are very simple rope-made mechanisms, but mechanisms nevertheless, and, as history has taught us time and again, mechanisms can be improved - especially when the materials they are made of have been improved. Contemporary
ropes and cords are very different than the ropes and cords ropes that have been used for "thousands of years", so, why should contemporary
knots tied on quite different materials remain the same ? I do not believe that all the possible simple knots have been tied and tried already - we had the Zeppelin bend, just a few decades ago, and the Gleinpir knot, just a few years ago, to remind us this... Also, I have seen that, although nowadays the
materials used by fishermen in different parts of the world are almost identical, the
fishing knots tied on them are not.
When I make a net I generally use the sheet bend which locks each mesh into place. (the TIB knot you show in your last example would slide back and forth on mesh it is tied into). A net with meshes that slide would not be suitable for most uses that a net is designed for.
The most simple TIB double loop was offered as an example only - there are many other TIB loops with non-communicating eye legs that will not slide more than a similar non-TIB bend, in general, and the Sheet bend, in particular, and that can serve to weave a net where the netting needle will not have to penetrate one or more already formed bights.
I use a needle in my netmaking because it is a convenient way to carry the cord I am using when I make a net.
You do not have to "carry" the cord you are using along the net - it can lie there, on the floor, right from the start to the end of the weaving, just as the threads used in
knitting, for example. (See the attached pictures). You only have to unwind and "consume" the cord from a bobbin, but the two ends of it can remain out of reach, until the very last "closing" knot. Of course, the knots at the mesh s should be tighter than simple round turns, but we have tight TIB knots that will clinch on the previous row s bight as tightly as we wish.
I have never used a net or repaired a net, and, frankly, I do not like this highly non-selective method of fishing ( that reduces the biodiversity of the oceans - to say nothing about the collateral damage to non-edible creatures it is responsible of). I just see a knotted 2D structure, and I ask myself, why those knots should be non-TIB, and not "close" only at the beginning and at the end of it ? It was an academic question, I had no intention to suggest a better mousetrap here !
On the issue of speed, I can not comment, because I can not say if another method - which I do not know, for the time being, but whose possibility I can not deny in advance - would not be even speedier than the "traditional" one that is forced to use a netting needle. Also, I do not know how the industry-made nets are weaved - I do not know if they use the same knots and weaving technique as those shown in the pictures of the article, or not.
