The bowline on-the-bight is a great, beautiful knot. TIB and easily tied
in-the-bight and
in-the-end, simple, secure,
either-end-loadable - what more can we demand from a loop ? It should occupy a place in every knot tyer s Pantheon of "old" knots - and it certainly would do in mine, if I allow 13 deities, and not only 12.
However, there are three things that I do not like in this knot :
First, that feeling of weakness of the single-line collar. All the rest of the knot is made of a double line, and this offers strength and resistance against wear, except the tip of collar...
Second, the two eyes are directly "communicating" with each other - which may not be what we need in an application, and which can also increase wear in the area of the collar, because, if/when the size of the two eyes changes, the rim of the collar is working like a wire saw on the pair of the ends, and vice versa.
Third, the double line is fine when it runs along straight segments, but poses problems when it makes O- and U-turns. Exactly as it happens in all such "retraced" knots ( meaning knots which can be tied
in-the-end by retracing the path of the first line with a second line ) - the
fig.8 bend and
fig.8 loop, for example. In each turn, each of the two lines can follow the inner or the outer track, and so the knot can be dressed in many ways, and the most regular, streamlined dressing of them requires attention from the knot tyer. That is the reason I had abandoned the "shrunk", single-eye version of this loop : too many dressing forms mean that the knot is not self-dressing, and it can settle in a not-optimal form (1).
Transforming the simple collar into a "Bull" one, i.e., an one-and-a-half turn "doubled" collar, as shown in the attached pictures, may address all those "faults"/ shortcomings. The knot remains easy to tie, and it becomes more easy to dress and to inspect - furthermore, I have the feeling that it becomes more
homogenous, because the line is doubled everywhere. As a drawback, the two eyes may initially be set up unequal ( but they can also remain unequal, after the end of the dressing ), so the one may be forced to bear more load than the other - but I think that this difference will be smoothed out very soon by some slippage of the eyeleg of the smaller/ more loaded eye through its other end = through the nipping turn.
( To see a "vertical" picture, like the first one, in a larger size, download it, and then flip it horizontally ).
1.
http://igkt.net/sm/index.php?topic=4687.0