DL I think by your re-rephrasing of my instructions, that you are missing my point a little.
I am not talking about simply folding a bight and tying whatever with it.
But why not?
Anyway, this IS a good point to make;
that circumstances might demand more,
okay, fine --but for starters, bight-qua-end
is worth realizing/understanding.
I'm talking about tying a long loop knot to form a folded bight where the fold is joined at one point away from the end of it.
At that point all force on the folded bight always comes from the loop knot, from whatever one direction it pulls from.
Of course there are still two rope ends attached to the other side of that loop knot fighting (possibly) to pull it here or there, but at any one time they create a single net force pulling up the folded bight in a single direction
.
It's not just question of knot integrity given
different directions of loading (possibly simul-
taneously), but of that effect
on the wrapping
around the pole --of jerking the structure from
one orientation into another.
My "Z" splits the work into the two bights,
each of which deals with one direction, one end.
Now, in the foggy circumstance of some tying off
for fall protection, I guess it might be known that
one will only load in one direction and ... we can
even skip the forming of an eye knot --though
we might still prefer that, I guess.
--dl*
====
If that bight is then tied with whatever, those two forces are not trying to pry whatever apart. The whatever still sees only a single force down a single doubled line.
Can the direction of that force change? Sure. That can be true regardless if there are two things fighting to control that direction. Ropes move. Directions can change. If you want a knot resistant to movement, then of course "whatever" has to be that kind of knot.
As it turns out, he's falling on this thing. It's going to be stressed from one end in one predictable direction, and rotation of the knot a little probably isn't a big concern anyway.
I was just thinking about going with the standard trusted double 8 here, but I know people are going to throw a fit about to dress it with 4 segments going through it to get the max possible tonnage of holding power. It would be a massive knot though and use a ton of rope.
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