This is a curiosity of a knot I thought you might enjoy looking at.
I was using the reversed pairs of hitches that comprise this knot in the role of an adjunct knot or locking knot to make the tag end more secure and prevent it from being pulled out so easily - something climbers will be familiar with. And in this role, it works very well.
To prove to myself that it was only ever going to be suitable for this role given its propensity to move up and down the main line (fine super braids are notoriously slippery!), I made a loop out of it. For, I knew that given enough reversed hitches, the loop would start to grip and hold fast. Determined to prove that this ability to hold could never match the abilities of some of my other braid loop knots, I put it to the test on my digital scales. I could not have been more wrong! The results were up there with the best of them - 90% - 100%.
A loop knot that can be made to slip, when it suits, yet hold as well as any non-slip loop on the most slickest of materials is something different.
Yet, stacked reversed half hitches have, interestingly, been used in arthroscopic surgery and, of course, two of the first knots an angler learns are the line-to-line Surgeons Knot and the Surgeons Loop Knot (sadly no good with braid).
In fact, I would go so far as to say that this type of knotting would, most likely, be familiar to our ancestors. It has simply fallen out of favour because of all the new alternatives that we have created for ourselves. Human history is littered with techniques that were discovered, lost for centuries, and then re-discovered at some time removed.
I think the real reason it is not in favor is because the grip is so dependent on how the tyer initially cinches up the knot. Those latter tucks aren’t getting tighter with increased load.
As line diameter shrinks under tension, the absence of load distribution through the knot will be detrimental.
This good result was in slippery braided (“gel spun”? HMPE?)
angling line ?! !!
I’ve heard the assertion that eventually such hitching
–i.p., “cow’d”/“larkshead’d” as you’ve done, vs. clove’d–
will ultimately hold; I’ve been suspicious of that,
as I think in some materials --STIFF, unbending-- one will
just have a longer train of non-gripping structures that
get pulled, never having bite enough somewhere to
lead other turns of the hitching to tighten around the
line.
And, as Roo observes, for rope, esp. nylon, under increased
loading comes stretch & hence diminished diameter.