Thanks. To all members of this Forum, Happy New Knotting year - with New Knots ! Each time
I suppose that everything of so simple a nature has already being discovered, here comes a squarebanksalaska with his Hitch#4, out of the blue, to make us add another file into our knotting toolbox !
For the approach of the tail of #4 is quite reminiscent of the ossel hitch on cursory glance...
On
cursory glance, perhaps... On a
careful glance, absolutely not. The locking mechanism of the Hitch#4 is identical to the mechanism of the so-called
simple hitch a-la-Gleipnir - although I have to admit that one should pay some attention to
see this, indeed
. If the Standing end had continued its winding around the pair of the oblique riding turn / Tail end for another half turn (=180 degrees more ), and if, after forming this 360 degrees Gleipnir nipping loop, it had completed one more round turn on the surface of the pole, the Gleipnir mechanism would had been obvious to everybody - although all the essential elements of the core Hitch#4 would had remained the same. From a complete Gleipnir hitch, Hitch #4 retains only the one half, the most essential part - which nevertheless is adequate to keep the Tail end firmly squeezed on the surface of the pole by the oblique riding turn, and firmly locked within the hemi-circular rim of the - halved - Gleipnir nipping loop, formed by the Standing end. The
Ossel hitch does not work like this : 1, It has no oblique riding turn, to squeeze the crossing point of the Tail end and the Standing end on the surface of the pole - as it also happens in the case of the Strangle and the Constrictor, for example. 2. It can be considered as a "locked" variation of the Cow hitch, while the Hitch#4 has no relation to the Cow hitch whatsoever. ( This means that there is some sort of
mechanical advantage present in the
Ossel hitch, which is absent in the Hitch#4 ). 3. To reach the locking mechanism, the Standing end of the
Ossel hitch has first to make a full round turn, so it has to overcome the friction forces it encounters along this path - while in the Hitch#4 any pull of the Stranding end is transferred to the locking mechanism
directly, without any power loss due to friction. 4. Last but not least, in the Ossel hitch the locking half-rim remains almost tangent to the surface of the pole, while in the Hitch#4 it remains almost perpendicular to it - just as it happens in the case of the
simple-hitch-a-la-Gleipnir. This means that the perpendicular to the axis - halved - nipping loop is squeezed on the curved surface of the pole, so it squeezes anything that penetrates it more forcefully. ( I believe that the knot tyer had this particular dressing in his mind - the nipping half-turn being perpendicular to the axis of the pole -, because this is how his hitch is shown at the first post of the thread. )
Having said that, I do not doubt that, on a cursory glance, there is some relation between the Hitch#4 and the
Ossel hitch, indeed
. However, I believe that if we wish to "lock" both limbs of the Cow hitch, we better use the mechanism of the
Locked Cow hitch (1)-(4) - which is the most tight two-wrap hitch we have. Now, even if it is not so tight ( perhaps because of the absence of the mechanical advantage present in the
Locked Cow hitch ), Hitch#4 seems also a more tight hitch than the Ossel hitch. The -halved- Gleipnir mechanism locks the Standing end much better - so any tensile forces induced into the oblique riding turn can be accumulated there and remain in place, even when / while the Standing end is not loaded.
1.
http://igkt.net/sm/index.php?topic=4035.msg24785#msg247852.
http://igkt.net/sm/index.php?topic=41553.
http://igkt.net/sm/index.php?topic=44414.
http://igkt.net/sm/index.php?topic=4673