Challenge: Breakaway Neck Lanyard

[knot4u]

My Ranking for this Thread so Far

After testing dozens of solution, I’ve discovered a recurring theme in the solutions I like the most: The “weak link” is small, simple, and consistently weak. By the way, when I say “weak link”, I am honing in on where the money is for a breakaway, and don’t mean anything negative. These properties ensure reliability. I know it’s an uncomfortable concept at first. Personally, my mind is geared for making a knot more substantial, not less substantial. The breakaway concept requires us to think in the opposite way. Anyway, here’s my ranking…

#1 My favorite solution so far is the Double Overhand Noose with the bight going through the loop of the noose. This proves I’m not partial to my own solution because this solution was introduced by SaltyCracker and modified by me. The “weak link” is the single diameter rope of the noose. If you can’t get this solution to work consistently, you’re doing something wrong. Once you set the noose to the right pressure, crank down on the Double Overhand, and the leave it and forget it.

#2 My second favorite solution is using some variation of the O-rings. I’m comfortable with taking credit for this solution. The “weak link” is the O-ring. This solution guarantees a consistent break force every single time. On the down side, it’s more complex, takes longer to tie, and you must carry spare O-rings on the lanyard.

#3 My third favorite favorite is, believe it or not, modularama’s idea of melting the ends. The “weak link” is the melted and fused bond. I was critical about the chain idea, which I think is a really bad idea. However, with the basic melting ends idea, it’s possible to set the weak link to be substantially smaller than any other solution here that requires a knot. The downside is that you need to either (1) have a lighter and knife with you or (2) have a backup plan to be able to tie one of the other solutions when the link breaks. Also, this solution only works with paracord as far as I know. If you put all your eggs in this basket and don’t learn another solution, then I don’t know what you’re thinking.

#4 I’m still giving other solutions a fair shot. For example, I’m still testing Urfin’s solution involving the Double Overhands, as well as other solutions. At this point, however, the bar is set high. This has been a great thread!

[knot4u]

@Urfin post:40

Loops are much smaller in real life. I’ve mention their size is exaggerated but I’ll attach a photo of how they really look to this message. Even this is not a limit: you can make them as small as you want even after tying since all it requires is pulling on the free ends.

That’s better, but there is still a fundamental function that makes me uneasy. I still run the risk of jamming the Double Overhand onto the bight. It’s a fallacious argument to say a Double Overhand is incapable of jamming in this situation. A primary job of a Double Overhand is to jam. It’s a design flaw to use the Double Overhand itself as the “weak link” in a breakaway.

In comparison, with SaltyCracker’s solution in my pics, even if the noose happens to tighten around the bight, the little strand of rope holding the bight never provides enough binding force to jam the bight. I just retied this solution, while tightening the Double Overhand Noose as hard as I could. The breaking force remained safely in the range I expect. I have tried every which way to fail this solution, and have been unsuccessful at failing it. It’s idiot-proof.

I’ll continue testing your solution and give it a fair shot. I ask that you do the same with that other noose solution for which I provided pics.

[knot4u]

@modularama post:39

Your general rule of not cutting rope seems to be a technicality that is beyond the scope of this special case, in which breakability is the main requirement (while deconstructing the lanyard and reusing its relatively short rope for something other than carrying gear defeats the purpose of having one, especially when you could attach a more substantial amount of rope to it, as I was saying).

The critical concept here is that the chain is a redundant system, in which my having to reconnect it with a stronger binding (in a hurry) would not prevent the rest of it from working as a breakaway, and I don’t think this is over-engineering, because the links also function as points of attachment for various items, as well as distributing the impact of a breaking force over an area four-times broader than the cord itself (without adding bulkiness to the design). These may not be the attributes you want (and I am not saying that they have to be equalled by other examples), but they do have a purpose.

You seem like an intelligent guy. So, I don’t know why your thinking continues to remain way off. A survival situation will throw unpredictable curve balls at you. That means it’s best to prepare for a broad range of situations. By the way, you lost your gear bag when you slipped into the rushing river, and the only gear you still have is around your neck. One continuous cord around your neck allows you to be prepared for 1,000+ applications. It’s possible to make a neck lanyard comfortable with 100+ feet of continuous paracord by using a decorative chain sinnet. You still keep the multiple points of attachments and the wider surface area you desire. You make one breakaway, which is all that’s needed.

If you break up the lanyard into tiny chunks, you basically drop the number of applications down to one use or just a few. Limiting options down to a few, when you can easily and efficiently keep the options up at 1,000+, makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Eliminating the advantage of a long cord for the non-benefit of breakaway redundancy is a terrible use of resources. Notice your solution is the only solution with 20 or so breakaways. That’s because I’m sure most people are understanding this concept that the other breakaways shown here can be beefed up with 100 feet of paracord if so desired. Heck, 5 feet of continuous pararcord is way more useful than twenty 3-inch links.

[modularama]

@knot4u post:43

You seem like an intelligent guy. So, I don’t know why your thinking continues to remain way off. A survival situation will throw unpredictable curve balls at you. That means it’s best to prepare for a broad range of situations. By the way, you lost your gear bag when you slipped into the rushing river, and the only gear you still have is around your neck. One continuous cord around your neck allows you to be prepared for 1,000+ applications. It’s possible to make a neck lanyard comfortable with 100+ feet of continuous paracord by using a decorative chain sinnet. You still keep the multiple points of attachments and the wider surface area you desire. You make one breakaway, which is all that’s needed.

If you break up the lanyard into tiny chunks, you basically drop the number of applications down to one use or just a few. Limiting options down to a few, when you can easily and efficiently keep the options up at 1,000+, makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Eliminating the advantage of a long cord for the non-benefit of breakaway redundancy is a terrible use of resources. Notice your solution is the only solution with 20 or so breakaways. That’s because I’m sure most people are understanding this concept that the other breakaways shown here can be beefed up with 100 feet of paracord if so desired. Heck, 5 feet of continuous pararcord is way more useful than twenty 3-inch links.

Well, you seem to be ignoring my point that I could carry extra rope and other gear on my lanyard and use that instead of breaking it down. If you are really worried about unpredictable curve balls, then why take the position that redundancy is unnecessary? As if to say everything can go wrong, except for that one breakaway not working as expected. I doubt it. What if the breakaway section got pinned down or caught up in such a way that it could not break? Taking your example of being swept into a river, say your lanyard got pinned under a heavy rock while the current made its rope clothesline your neck, and the one or two breakaways it had were each disabled by how it was reoriented underwater before getting caught up. You would want more redundancy than that to allow the lanyard to break in this case.

As far as my intentions go, the only things a breakaway lanyard must do are to hold gear and break under excessive force, without causing trauma, no matter how it is caught or pinned. And I like the chain, because it provides multiple opportunities for each of these to occur. To say this makes absolutely no sense whatsoever is odd to me, because I see it being useful for obvious reasons, which only expand on the concept of this “breakaway lanyard”, while the notion of it being a swiss army knife is more of a peripheral issue and should involve attaching gear to it for those purposes.

What would you do with your gear if you broke your lanyard down for its rope… toss it? No, I would rather keep my lanyard intact and single purpose to maintain its primary function of carrying other things, which may be used as necessary, and put back for easy access when needed. Do you not think I can carry extra rope on a breakaway loop lanyard? It seems like a simple matter to me. While finding the critical breakaway component disabled at the moment of truth would not be a simple matter, unless there were redundant backups built into the lanyard.

In principle, I think you are compromising safety for additional uses of the lanyard’s material, which would result in eliminating the lanyard anyway. So I do not see how this is a fair criticism of a design that was not intended to be repurposed, but rather reinforce its purpose of safety, while allowing for multipurpose attachments.

[Sweeney]

I think that this is getting into the realms of fantasy! A neck lanyard has a breakaway for safety but in the extreme circumstances described above I carry a knife. Having multiple break points - no matter how carefully made- means that for every extreme survival scenario there are dozens of everyday events which will break one or more links and I don’t carry around the equipment to melt paracord and even if I did there are few places indoors (in the UK at least) where a naked flame would be permitted and doing this outside is at best difficult. Making a knotted chain is easy, adding say 3 breakaway points is also easy if probably unnecessary but this method of using separate chain links sounds to me like a solution trying to find a problem I’m afraid. Good luck with it!

Barry

[modularama]

@Sweeney post:45

I think that this is getting into the realms of fantasy! A neck lanyard has a breakaway for safety but in the extreme circumstances described above I carry a knife. Having multiple break points - no matter how carefully made- means that for every extreme survival scenario there are dozens of everyday events which will break one or more links and I don’t carry around the equipment to melt paracord and even if I did there are few places indoors (in the UK at least) where a naked flame would be permitted and doing this outside is at best difficult. Making a knotted chain is easy, adding say 3 breakaway points is also easy if probably unnecessary but this method of using separate chain links sounds to me like a solution trying to find a problem I’m afraid. Good luck with it!

Barry

The links would not break under the moderate stresses of everyday events any more than a breakaway knot would, which is not at all. I also made the point that a link could be repaired statically, if a lighter was hard to come by, while the rest of the chain would maintain its breakaway functionality (and could be fused properly later). The example of an extreme circumstance that I gave could be impossible to resolve with a knife, especially if a rope lanyard first caused trauma to one’s neck underwater. Redundancy is not a solution trying to find a problem, but a system that does not rule out the potential for its own failure, and corrects for it. This one has 360 degrees of safety built into it, so I wouldn’t need any luck…

Anyway, I suppose it is time that I broke away from this discussion, because it is also going in circles. Thanks for all of the examples.

S.B.

[James_Petersen]

What about cutting short the inner strands of the paracord and then tying the ends together with a beer knot that in which the inner part of the shell doesn’t traverse through the whole knot? Or use a short section of shell to cover both ends of the line and use a beer knot as above, but have each end of the lanyard end 1/2 way through the knot?