So here's the puzzle: what's the best binder for a situation where you're splinting or bundling irregularly shaped objects, such that you can't rely on having a nice convex spot for a constrictor or strangle knot? Parameters:
- For the moment, I don't care about untying it later, so a jamming knot is just as good as one that's easy to untie
- Assume that the application is such that the objects being tied are hard with no give, and that they need to be held as tightly as possible
The latter parameter is my objection to the Gelipnir:
no matter how hard I pull on the thing, there's always a small retraction
when the turNip (or whatever it's called) settles down to clamp the free ends,
so I always lose a little tension.
Roo is on the right track with advice to put on many
hard turns, and then whatever inefficiency occurs on
making the final securing lock, that slack must be
distributed over the many tight wraps in order for
it to loosen the binding --and that would require a
LOT of slackening of the finish!
Incidentally, you might use an old mistake for the
constrictor --something an author or illustrator
came up with in imagery in trying to instantiate the
variously echoed verbal illustration of "Tom Bowling":
tie a
clove hitch and tie off its tails with a simple
overhand "throw" as though completing a
square knot.
If there's decent friction in the material, the
clovemight get tighter than a
constrictor for the lack of
the
overhand inner crossing's friction --but just
for that lack it might not hold such tightness. But
I thought I'd note this option, which should be more
easily untied than the
C. and also not vulnerable
to coming untied on losing surface contact --which
it needs, though, to be tied initially.
Your point about the
Gleipnir resonates with me,
as force must build tension all the way around the
bound object(s) before it tightens that
turNip to lock
--and that too often, in MY experience, doesn't work
very well, alas. So, I sought a structure in which
the immediate pulling would bring locking (but now
I should wonder about then this structure's delivering
binding force, huh?!). Here's what I've come up with.
Form a sufficiently large eye so that you can put a
round turn in its end (540 degrees) --this will be the
turNip-ing structure--; then take this eyeknot's
SPart around the object(s) and through the
round turn(this part's presence is to stabilize the turn qua circle)
and around again and now through again but in the
opposite direction to however you did it the
first time. (Well, it makes sense to pass the tail
through the turn down-towards-object at first,
so that one brings it up-through-turn on the
finish, making for easier hauling on the tail.)
Now, as you pull on the tail --and this might take
some alteration of directions, so to draw different
sides of the binding (i.e., to pull the eye side, or
to pull material through the eye from the opposite
side --friction will affect what moves and what
stays put)--,
the eye's
round turn will ever tighten
immediatelyon the tail. And after getting sufficient tightness,
you can put in a
slip-knot or some other means
of ensuring that the tail stays put.
(To picture this structure's nipping region : imagine
an X --these are the two passes through the nipping
turn-- and then the eye's reach to put a round turn
right around the crossing point from one side, gripping
the parts tightly, when the tail part of this "X" is
pulled either up away from the bound object or
more in opposition to the eye.)
Now, the structures that Xarax touts as (pure 42) solutions
are so ineffective as to be comical (and, yes, I can recognize
my contribution to the genesis of the 2nd). They go
towards winning the
Too Clever by Half prize, but can
be fun to play with. My similar-to-2nd binder takes some
care in setting up, and can give some misleading indication
of tightening if one's not careful --parts can move, but
they are doing less tightening than one thinks!
Incidentally, I've had instances to try out some of these
binders in replacing lost screws/bolts in cycling pedals.
I bound them appropriately with nylon fishline. In an
earlier instance, I recall simply laying a multi-coil/parts
loop/circle of the line against one side and completing
its reach around the parts to be bound by making the
several passes as though forming a
versatackle,
hauling this multi-strand life-saver mass of fishline
hard around the foot plate and so on with the
locking tightening of the tail's wraps. (I'm not sure
that I did anything to this circle of strands, but just
sized it to allow room for the tail's tightening wraps,
which flowed right off from one end of it?!)
In the more recent instance, I used the structure
described above.
--dl*
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