New Hitches

Practical Knots
21

Dan Lehman wrote:

Quote from: J.Knoop on July 16, 2009, 08:47:11 PM Dan Lehman wrote: [quote Clearly km61:38#12 is not the Alove. We aren't looking for inverting, flipping, recasting things for equality.

You have no definition for what constitutes “equality”.
[\quote]
And to think, we’ve operated for so long like this, without great trouble.
A natural understanding serves well enough here.

Meaning you are just having great fun playing this game, but nothing serious, I presume? (Italicized “great” is mine)

I beg to differ on your point of view that if a transformation is required the structures are different. Depending on the type of transformation they may not be intrinsically different, and that alone has caused tremendous nomenclatural confusion. If you cannot unambiguously identify a structure, after you have allowed it to be tangled to a complexity baffling your wildest dreams, then what hope do you have for classification? An Overhand with a fancy complex twist in its belly still represents an Overhand Knot Structure. So, where are your limits for “permitted additional tangling”? Can we call such a process “complexifying a structure”? Note that structural complexification is something different from tying method, the latter leads you there (the process rather than the product).

If you allow a tying method as “something” new, then knotter’s paradise has just been blown to smithereens. There are infinitely more tying methods than structures. Structures are not tamed, tying methods go completely rampant. If two tying methods lead to a similar structure, are they identical? If you are nodding, then consider the case of the Capstan Knot where there are at least 4 appearances, each in a different stage of structural complexification, going by different names in ABOK and EKFR, totally unlinked. What is, off the top of my head, #1055-1056? A Capstan on the Bight, or something else? (I will verify this reference later for completeness sake.)

I will conclude that you have no definition for equality and this leaves the door open for any stupid knot claim.

We are judging *knots*, not pdfs or other documentation. I'm pretty sure that neither Mr.Chan nor any other person will make a claim on a format of presentation.

Not judging pdf’s? I think you missed the point, dear Dan. The point is the format of representation. Mr.Chan’s pdf is, what it is, mr.Chan’s ambiguous pdf, with an Alove tying method claim for which IGKT is on the verge of issueing a Certificate of Newness (CON). This whole thread so far has been about the confusion bellowing from that pdf. You just, in fact, scorned TradeUseOnly on that issue :). Aside from that, it is totally unclear which criteria are to be applied to assess the claim and hence anybody can claim anything. Mr.Chan’s pdf represents his ideas on 2 (and some more) hitches. If you take that as your starting point then you are off on a slippery tangent plane. It is not clear what the case is; is IGKT as self-appointed body for consultative purposes issuing the CON on what that pdf represents? And what exactly is that? The structure? The tying methods? And what is that CON worth if those issues remain unresolved? I am inclined to propose that we call the CON-issue process: conning, but will not :).

You hold that people will not make a claim on a format of presentation. I have not personally met mr.Chan, he conveys his ideas by means of … right! It seems that you must shape up this act of acknowledging “new knots”, as it is full of holes. There is no classification, there is no defintion for equality, there are unclear criteria, the process is left in the dark,… All in all it strikes me as not more than an unbased “professional judgement”. Nothing wrong with that provided you have the professional basis, in some way, to back your judgement.

The stories about the SmithHunterLehman and the Rosendahl Bends are very illustrative. If the SmithHunter debacle, Lehman had no publication to back-up his claim, led to IGKT, then not much has been learnt. There was a lot of fuss and misinformation about Edward Hunter’s Bend, this leads to IGKT, a “correction” surfaces, creditting Phil Smith (1982), but shedding some peculiar light on the sensational splash, spotlighting the guild originators’ competences. Now Geoffrey Budworth in Philip Howard’s Times article of October 6th 1978, already carefully added that Hunter’s Bend may have slipped from mainstream knot knowledge. However, that aspect was left silent and the guild enjoyed the “free advertisement”. Smart? It is indicative of motives. On the one hand you claim to be serious about knots, yet on the other hand you exploit the media by letting them blow up the lorey stories, believing it will benefit you. Well, it does not. If you do not have the management of your knowledge in place, you must be prepared to eat humble pie, i.e. lose face at times. This will happen as soon as Mr.Chan is hailed by IGKT as new-knot contributor. It is not Murphy’s Law in action but preventable dumbness, as history has a tendency to repeat itself.

Thanks for the congrats. Within the month of JustJuly :).

22

This is a personal contribution. I don’t think that the term “new knot” is at all helpful. There is in fact no such thing which can be proved to be a new knot since we just don’t know what every person on every continent has ever done with a piece of rope, twine etc. Nor does it matter. I am keen to see that knot knowledge is brought to light - if we use “discovered” then perhaps we are nearer the mark. Livingstone discovered Victoria Falls - they had been there for millenia. But he got the credit as a great Victorian explorer notwithstanding that local people had been well aware of his so-called discovery. So it is with knotting. To give credit to a person I think that a practical knot has to fulfil certain criteria - the following are a first stab:

  1. It must be useful.

  2. It must be reasonably strong and secure (I am not going to define reasonable here but if a knot slips easily then it probably fails to satisfy criterion 1. anyway).

  3. If it has been published before there it is reasonable to expect that the discoverer would not have been aware of the publication - in other words a simple Internet search would not have helped, some detailed research would have to have been undertaken requiring a level of dedication beyond the average “knotter”.

  4. Notwithstanding prior publication the discoverer has shown a commendable interest in knotting and has genuinely attempted to further our knowledge and skills.

OK some of these are subjective. This is not about claiming a “First” but encouraging an interest in knots - and seeking to ensure that those who are trying to find something new do at least basic homework before claiming “newness”. If people feel discouraged because of an academic argument about when is a knot new or dismissed because in some obscure pamphlet in 1903 somebody drew the same thing then they and others will fast lose interest. And yet these obscure knotting works (or at least their knots) should be brought to general attention and if takes a rediscovery to stimulate research to do that then I am all for it. But credit where it’s due to Mr Chan - it takes some courage to stand up in the face of experts and say “look what I’ve discovered” knowing that you could be publicly shot down in flames for your trouble!!

Barry

PS Mr Chan has sent me some corretced drawings which I will post when I have reduced the file size.

23

:smiley:
May we take this speculation to imply that you believe that if
we do have such a definition that “knot claims” are not stupid?!
That would be quite something! :wink:

Meaning you are just having great fun playing this game, but nothing serious, I presume?
Actually, it ranges from fun to tedious, with the failure to fully suffer the tedium evident in omission of checking (i.e., having internalized) the aforementioned KM CW/PvdG exposition of snug- & noose-hitches.
I beg to differ on your point of view that if a transformation is required the structures are different.
But this is a quite natural understanding. In the Alove assertion (by you), something akin to Ashley's #1682 (Buoy Rope H.) is supposed to equal a sort of oddball Fisherman's Bend -- and that simply fails a [i]reasonable person[/i] test of equality. And I don't care to have this evaluation couched in some kind of strict terms, such as might (in topology) equate the oft'-relied-upon Fig.8 eyeknot with No-Knot (as any Tied-In-Bight (TIB) knot is). For those lacking the KM source, one might say that km61:38#12 is to the Strangle as is Ashley's #1674 is to the Constrictor: the end passed OVER the crossing part into the final tuck.
Depending on the type of transformation they may not be intrinsically different, and that alone has caused tremendous nomenclatural confusion. If you cannot unambiguously identify a structure, after you have allowed it to be tangled to a complexity baffling your wildest dreams, then what hope do you have for classification?
As noted above, it is my understanding that biological classifications such as in ornithology are not so immutable; that upon reflection (re-thinking) and new information sometimes thoughts about distinct species change. (And we might agree that there need not be even "complexity ..." to such extent to make classification a difficult task: some simple issues can be much more than surmised when you look into them trying to nail them down!)
An Overhand with a fancy complex twist in its belly still represents an Overhand Knot Structure.
If this "complex twist" amounts to some TIB knot, then it is different; otherwise, it sounds artificial beyond worth of consideration.
If you allow a tying method as "something" new, then knotter's paradise has just been blown to smithereens. There are infinitely more tying methods than structures.
But our counting all of one infinity will be no longer than counting several. A new tying method is certainly worthy of recognition (i.e., knowing), as has been best demonstrated in recent memory perhaps [i]here[/i] in the presentation of a new method to tie the Butterfly mid-line eyeknot by Alpineer. This knowledge has already seeped out to some rockclimbers, where it received appreciation! -- and all still lacking any CON or even fame & fortune ("even"!).
If two tying methods lead to a[n identical] structure, are they identical?
No, the methods are distinct, as the words indicate. -- with some obvious importance in the case where forming a TIB knot renders it impossible (by TIB, i.e.) to tie through an enclosed (i.e. ring) structure; rockclimbers (and associated disciplines SAR, caving, & canyoneering, at least) refer to distinct knots "Fig.8 follow-through" & "Fig.8 on a bight". -- even to the point of making separate tests of knot strength !!! (It would never occur to me to believe that the test device would discern a tying method, unless one carefully explained why it could be so (e.g., that one method introduces torsion, or that by one method a different dressing/setting typically occurs) !! (Cf. Dave Richards's kernmantle testing, on-line (and cited in this forum), and Jim Frank's [i][u]CMC Rope Rescue Manual[/i] for such distinct testings (differences well within the range of "noise" -- 1-2% pt.s).)
...consider the case of the Capstan Knot where there are at least 4 appearances, each in a different stage of structural {complication}, going by different names in ABOK and EKFR, totally unlinked. What is, off the top of my head, #1055-1056? A Capstan on the Bight, or something else? (I will verify this reference later for completeness sake.)
Ashley's two images/numbers show [i]two[/i] , distinct knots. [i][u]EKFR[/i] is itself amazing [i]unlinked[/i] , so I don't much bother with it as other than a hodgepodge collection most appallingly unintelligently done -- and surviving the decades in publication!

A common problematic classification case is the venerable Bowline, which can, in one
fell swoop it seems, go from a typically illustrated (perhaps loosely set) marriage of
a Half-hitch-like “loop”/turn and a bight, to – as tension rises – a non-HH round turn
loop & bight, to – greater tension, maybe “shock” loading – a spiral and bight,
and then that is more or less a sort of Pile Hitch noose! I do not consider the extremes
of this transformation to be “equal”, but clearly they can result from the one tying
method after some force-induced transformation. I suspect a test device will show
differences (if not in ultimate strength, in where break occurs, et cetera).

... anybody can claim anything.
Yep, and reap a big [i]So what?![/i] -- claims may come & go (and never cross paths with the IGKT, for that matter).
And what is that CON worth if those issues remain unresolved? I am inclined to propose that we call the CON-issue process: conning, but will not :).
If ... , or if not -- either way. The fanciful process does appeal just on the sense of seeing what it actually might amount to! ??? :)
All in all it strikes me as not more than an unbased "professional judgement". Nothing wrong with that provided you have the professional basis, in some way, to back your judgement.
The result matches the significance, I'd say. (Though CONning someone just to measure the significance tickles my fancy: maybe a counter-IGKT would arise in protest to the silly CON upon realization of non-newness. and ... knotting religions.)

(I’ll put a reply to Sweeney separately, I think, though of course it relates.)

–dl*

postscript

Thanks for the congrats. Within the month of JustJuly :)

You’re welcome. And I l ::slight_smile: k forward to see if you regard this as an august forum.

;D

24

I am in much agreement, here, but perhaps with slightly differing expression.
For starters, I DO believe that there are newly discovered knots – albeit perhaps
with no way to prove the newness. E.g., I don’t see a whole lot of inventiveness
in knotting even today, and believe that without going too far back in history
that one enters a world with such lesser options of knottable media that some
knots such as have become necessary to secure the fine, slick & strong angling
lines simply wouldn’t have been tied – they’d even be impracticable.
But I don’t expect to make much of this belief.

Otherwise, I say let us define “new” (and maybe use another word) to mean
“not in >>our<< record” – not even, you see, pretending to know the world,
but only our so-far knowledge of the world, what we’ve collected. Should we
somehow come up with a practical way to organize such information, then
the check for "new"ness is not so hard. (Problematic issues such as were
just discussed above will occur, but, hey, it gives the gray cells exercise.)

As I mentioned previously, I see some risk at some people taking on as a
challenge racking up tallies of how many additions to our set they can make
– king of the discovers. It might be that in some cases we simply reply with
some kind of verbal sigh to indicate “enough” and that the cataloguing work
for those discoveries exceeds our perceived merit in them. Best, though, is
that no one takes such a course.

To give credit to a person ...
... one can be precisely literal: was brought to our attention on by . That expresses precise conditions regarding our knowledge and the fact of submittal, without any assertion about things beyond that. If information is maintained per knot (as it comes), possibly it will later be noted that some knot was subsequently learned to have been in use (presently or historically). SOME help in distinction --which so far hasn't been mentioned here-- can come from noting in what material(s) the knot occurs. (For knot "inventors", this usually amounts to some convenient cord --witness Derek's favored fine polyester cord, which has colored his view on some structures-- , and as such maybe is less helpful than learning of some in-practice knot in materials seeing regular application.)
I think that a practical knot has to fulfil certain criteria - the following are a first stab: 1. It must be useful.
A practical knot must be practical, essentially. For [i]discoveries[/i] rather than [i]inventions[/i] --as we might distinguish for Victoria Falls vs. printing press-- , one will have the use cited. (And thereby one might have a clue to where to look for other occurrences, and to what competition the new knot has.)
2. It must be reasonably strong and secure
This puts more burden on us/et al. than is necessary. The Offset Ring Bend (Ashley's #1410, preferably neatly dressed though!) is one that many feel fails this criterion; but it is de rigueur for an abseil-ropes-joining knot in rockclimbing (not without much, repeated debate). A practical knot serves a purpose; that purpose might require neither strength nor security (don't ask me for an example of latter, but some simple things might get flimsy-temporary solutions -- and if it solves, so be it).
3. If it has been published before there it is reasonable to expect that the discoverer would not have been aware of the publication
I'm unsure of what you're saying here, but it seems to be that somehow a submittal would get some kind of recognition even if the knot were known? Frankly, if somebody's 4-yr-old sat down w/o any guidance and took a hank of cord and with a few whoops of "knoop, knoop!" managed to tie a bowline, I'd give that kid a slice of watermelon!! -- more accomplishment than arcane fiddling of twisty complexificationage-izing of something royally obscure, fer sure. Beyond saying a sort of [i]thank you for your contribution[/i], I don't see any great commitment for the IGKT to make. We can set about putting illustration to the universe of knots, perhaps, and note things that add to this. And beyond that, yes, we should feel free to get more excited/pleased and responsive to something regarded at quite useful or novel. (I, e.g., have a quite novel tape bend; soon I hope to learn by strength-testing whether it might also be useful.)
4. Notwithstanding prior publication the discoverer has shown a commendable interest in knotting and has genuinely attempted to further our knowledge and skills.
This very point came up before, with Derek on the other side of my less complimentary suggestion that such a hypothesized submittal showed a serious lack of research! (Obviously, not if the knot's obscure.) But to avoid much issue here, avoid much daring in the reception; yes, some thanks of this sort if fine. -- but I do chide myself on forgetting the KM hitches exposition.) And the submittal might show an interesting path to the well-known knot, just a further rounding out of knotting information. (I have found myself "inventing" the same *new* knot I previously invented years ago; but then I sometimes remark at the different paths that led me to it. fluff of a sort)

And, as noted, Alpineer’s new tying method for the Butterfly (let’s say that his was
a “new” knot submittal, and we confirmed the knot’s being (well) known) is a quite
useful addition to knots knowledge: it makes it easy to tie the knot with an eye
sized as desired.

This is not about claiming a "First" but encouraging an interest in knots - and seeking to ensure that those who are trying to find something new do at least basic homework before claiming "newness".
Partly I think it will help to find that valuable information about knots, rather than I-[i]invented[/i]-this submittals, get good reaction will encourage others to look for things of practical value that are missing from this envisioned IGKT catalogue, which we can note in big letters right up front will miss most of the infinity it could cover! We can even point out the ease of making "new" and how little helpful this can be, vs. the reporting of in-use and obviously non-new but not-yet-recognized knots, which is a good gain to knots knowledge. E.g., what if we were to learn that some fishers regularly used bowlines in nylon monofilament fishline, expecting them to capsize as described above (prior msg.) and form a PileHitch noose-hitch, for some shock-absorbing effect?! -- nothing really "new" on the knots, but a quite unknown use & behavior!
But credit where it's due to Mr Chan - it takes some courage to stand up in the face of experts and say "look what I've discovered" knowing that you could be publicly shot down in flames for your trouble!!
Too much drama is given all this. And this aspect too is hoped to be avoided by a rather matter-of-fact handling of "new"ness as an expanding of a particular (viz., IGKT's) knot set. Making that set comprehensible is a hard task. I tend to like 2-dimensional presentations, but interlinkings of knots is multi-dimensional.

Pieter van de Griend in one of his self-published books set out a neat table
showing how Clove/Strangle/Constrictor structures (each of various formations
where they had multiple turns, nb) could be expanded, with a notation for
citing particular ones. Projection from this beginning could take you as far
as is practical in any direction. It might be that the “Catalogue” is built up
in part by a collection of such presentations. (I have halfway begun a
similar sort of thing for “bowlines”, to redress the so-far limited knowledge
in that area (and do away with the How Many Bowlines? counting,
which to my mind is more nominal than actual in scope.)

And here we should be careful to realize that even the simple presentation of
some knot doesn’t imply that we really know it – a simple example being
that one might not realize that some knot is TIB (KM#19-20 in fact contain
articles about a bowlinesque eyeknot that initially wasn’t shown to be TIB,
but than that tying method was revealed).

–dl*

25

Well well Dan, in the game of poking fun with words? Your recent post is one brilliant sample of the category if-we-cannot-convince-then-we-shall-confuse. But let’s have a try at unravelling your string of words.

The definition of equality is required if you want to make sense out of the obvious question: do we already know about this thing in our set of collected objects? Will having such understanding close the door to any stupid knot claim? No, of course it will not, but that is not the issue. You want to be able to make a statement about whether or not a specific object is known to mankind. You, as the Chair of New Knot Claim Assessments, should posses and publish a standard for the comparison of knot structures. That you do not have it, have no clue how to establish one, merely muddle along and try to cover up by confusing the readers of this post is not very elegant. To say the least. What is so difficult about starting something like a list of well-known structures, their known deformations and a way to systematically search the list for any structure of which you wish to ascertain whether or not it belongs to your collected knowledge? Elementary and wrought with abundant scope for error, yes, but it is a process which can be repeated by anybody who wants to know whether some poor structure has been recorded. The notation which has been explored on this forum for a while now may serve as a first try at producing such a list of structures in normalised format. Link it to a file with attributes such as ABOK and/or EKFR reference and you will have covered, say 95% of all possible future knot claims.

On transformations it looks like we will have to agree that we shall differ long after my mortal soul is still smoldering in KnotHell. If you exclude a natural phenomenon such as kinking and twisting to obscure the nature of the structure you are investigating, then you have just landed yourself a pack of unnecessary work. I think, I understand what your problem may be: explaining to the claimant that the submitted structure is transformable to something which appears completely different from what has been submitted. But, yes, that is speculation on my part as I cannot read your mind. As a full-of-it member of this forum, I shall not speculate what if I could…:).

A common problematic classification case is the venerable Bowline, which can, in one fell swoop it seems, go from a typically illustrated (perhaps loosely set) marriage of a Half-hitch-like "loop"/turn and a bight, to -- as tension rises -- a non-HH round turn loop & bight, to -- greater tension, maybe "shock" loading -- a spiral and bight, and then that is more or less a sort of Pile Hitch noose! I do not consider the extremes of this transformation to be "equal", but clearly they can result from the one tying method after some force-induced transformation. I suspect a test device will show differences (if not in ultimate strength, in where break occurs, et cetera).

Yes, this is a fair point. Where does the tying method stop and the transformation begin? When a knot is properly packed before loading, its geometry will usually enable it to function as devised. The case where a Bowline capsizes into a Pile Hitch Noose immediately implies that the structure at the heart of the Bowline and the Pile Hitch Noose must equate. For most knotters that will be a bridge too far.

On two distinct tying methods leading to the same knot. It is well-known that certain tying methods (or materials) introduce more torque than others, but lead to the same structure. If you tie a Bowline on the Bight (#1075) in tape by methods 1080-1082 you introduce torque which may not escape while the structure is dressed and put to work. If you tie #1075 close to either end of your tape, using the bitter end as working part, you will allow superfluous torque to exit the structure during its manufacture. In the Bowline On the Bight case this is not much of problem, but for structures like the Capstan it is; causing its structure to become recorded as distinct entities, which they clearly are not. The configuration pulls up differently, but the structure remains the same.

All of these problems are about structure recognition. Humans record the structure as it appears, as they encounter it, then they are puzzled when certain structures are identical after all. But, as Chair of the Knot Claims Assessment, that should not keep you busy.

Joop Knoop.

26

Barry,

The term “new knot” is useless, but somehow this thread got named “New Hitches”, so the discussion is about newness. Personally I view knots as structures which exist a priori. There is nothing “new” about them as they have been out there awaiting discovery all along. I believe Dick Chisholm had a KM article on that Platonian view of knots once and Charles Warner mentions this view in his book. However, part of the problem is that people see knots in a competitive manner. Consider EKFR: we have 3668 knots! Overshouted by ABOK’s dustwrapper and raised to 3800. There clearly is some magic to knots, numbers and newness. There are guys out there on the internet claiming to know “250 knots of the top of their head”, or past IGKT presidents boasting they know 200 and “perhaps some more if they may peek in their books”. What kind of education will help if IGKT does not eradicate such pathological thinking at the root?

Your Livingstone sample is a good example of how things should work with knots. There are people out there in the big world who are aware of the existance (and usage) of specific structures, but their tacit knowledge is not shared. It is not recorded, not accessible unless you belong to their incrowd and for most of the world: it plainly never existed. How then are we to know that a knot is “new”? We cannot. Livingstone got the Victoria Falls on the map and that is exactly how it should work for our subject: map the universe of knots, educate anybody interested to learn about them, do the right things and then start doing those things the right way. Effectively the goal should be education, propagation of correct, verifiable, useful knowledge. The efficiency must be derived from how that is brought to the people wanting to know more about knots.

27

I think it’s more that I don’t have your definition of equality,
or even of knot – which latter case has all sorts of ramifications,
and, naturally, bears on equality for different notions of knot.
The U.S. Supreme Court has had its problems in dealing with pornography
– whatever that must be. And at one point attempted defining it based upon
“whether to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, …”
would so deem something pornographic. That didn’t work well there, but the
same approach with practical knots I think works well enough. You want
to include twists & transformations, as though such things are clearly deigned
by some Knot God(s) to be necessary elements in equality ; but I don not,
not for the knot of consideration here – a tangle with generally indicated
geometry and a particular loading.

In the Alove =?= km61:38#12 question, one can remove the object hitched to
and find them both what I’ll call “Fig.9” knots (the half-turn-less-than-Stevedore form)
of opposite handedness, and opposite loading for that form. Now, the Fig.9 can
be transformed into a couple of stable, symmetric forms, and then of course can
be reversed in loading (you just reverse steps taken to reach symmetry but on
the other side, so to speak). But so what? By a common-sense judgement,
they are distinct knots.

I understand what your problem may be: explaining to the claimant that the submitted structure is transformable to something which [i]appears [/i] completely different from what has been submitted.
Oh, no, that's not [i]my[/i] problem, as it's not something I'd even think to do (any more than testing the Fig.8 Follow-Through and Fig.8-on-a-bight eyeknots as distinct). Or, I could see mentioning it as a curiosity, but not as at all relevant in "new"ness.
The case where a Bowline capsizes into a Pile Hitch Noose immediately implies that the structure at the heart of the Bowline and the Pile Hitch Noose must equate. For most knotters that will be a bridge too far.
Well, we can regard this as a way of speaking, and of an aspect not relevant to the [i]knot equality[/i] issue of concern. -- that a [i]knot[/i], then, is some [i]structure[/i] in a particular geometric form, capable of holding knottable material in tension, with a particular loading.
The configuration pulls up differently, but the structure remains the same.
And the behavior, in practice, on a test device, on cyclical loading and abrasion ... ? Keep your notion of [i]equality[/i] for structures; there is a different one for [i]knots[/i] . insofar as such practical, common-understanding entities go.

–dl*

28

Note that this new knot debate has been in KM037 as early as 1991 starring the “Sonne Knot” [KM037;pp11-16]. On the one hand too bad Pieter van de Griend did not know that Elizabeth Little had it in her Logbook Notes throughout Life (New York 1889). On the other hand just as well.

Dan Lehman has a problem with different definitions and cannot make a choice? Dan, whatever way you go, you will end up needing both a classification and a process to determine equivalence across your classified objects. Frankly I do not give a a hoot whether you agree with my ideas/definitions or not, but so far I see you are left empty-handed.

Joop Knoop.

29

Mr Chan’s latest pictures attached.

Doc 09-005-04 Pics.pdf (61.6 KB)

30

There appears to be an inconsistency with the Alove drawing1 top right p1 and left under on p2 wrt to the other Alove Hitches.

31

Yes.
The initial (“1”) illustrations of the Alove are incorrect in the penultimate (3rd)
crossing of the arrowed completion, and this alone distinguishes it from Blove.
This is as Roo believed & I conceded must be the case.

Dan Lehman has a problem with different definitions and cannot make a choice? Dan, ... , so far I see you are left empty-handed.

And thus unburdened, on the bright side.

In my experience for now some 25 years I can’t think off the top of my head
of any “new” knot that has been submitted as such that has impressed me as
having much of any value – though “off … my head” might be overlooking
something, admittedly. I.p., not the “Irish Bowline”, nor either of Mr.Chan’s,
nor “Trident Loop”, nor a host of others (to which I could triple the number).
Hmmm, well, --juices trickling to older grey matter-- a John Smith bowlinesque
TIB eye knot in KM#19-20 (IIRC) is interesting (and has appeared in other
versions 4 more times in KM); his Icicle Hitch got some attention, and an
adaptation (loading both ends, i.e.) by arborists, but when I want a friction
grip I am usually building it with compound structures vs. a single “best” one.
Roger Miles turned over some stones to find an interesting interlocked Overhands
(“Symmetric”) bend or few – one of which got re-discovered by a Mr.Graves(?).

My personal favorite “new-to-me” knot found in the wild has been the
“Reverse Groundline Hitch”, which though well-known & much in use, does
not surface in its used manner in readily available documentation. Another
neat knot so far (to me) seen only in a replicated Samson Cordage photo
is what I regard as the paradigm “anti-Bowline”; this sort of thing IS shown
in [u]EKFR p.70pl.28#94-5 (mirrored on vertical axis) --sort of-- but
in typical, know-nothing Hansel&Gretel make-believe fashion, lacking any
hint of which end to load (which determines whether this eye knot is a
bowline or anti-bowline in my thinking (anti-bwl loads #94 on left).

And also the fascinating variety of things that can result from different
forms of the “Fig.9” structure – bend #1425 (arguably an abbreviated
such knot – i.e., its interlocked Overhands being truncated Fig.9s),
and a corresponding eyeknot (the S.Part making the full Fig.9 here),
and mid-line stoppers (qua dockline markers?!) and in noose-hitches.

There are many other things yet to be revealed that my pen has traced,
but I’ve not seen much worthwhile outside of this.

Which brings me to one of Barry’s points I neglected to reply to
fully as I’d thought:

“1. It must be useful.”

We might not perceive this day the use some knot might serve,
so this criterion should not guard the door. But, again, there
just isn’t much to gain in crossing through the “maybe new”
door anyway, and if all we can muster is some verbal shrug
of admitting our ignorance of said knot at the time of consideration,
then that’s it.

To put it another way, there is this pressure to make some kind
of binary & weighty determination re “new” which I believe leads us
the most off course – off any good course. “New” as in “new to us”
is pretty trivial; “not published” is both impractical to determine,
but also rather readily agreeably met by all sorts of simple extensions
and combinations. Consider e.g. --:
| “The Interlocked Round Turn Loop”,
| “The Round Turns With Interwoven Half Hitches” (“has no practical value”),
| “The Round Turn Overhand Knot and Half Hitch”,
| “The Stevedore’s Twin Loops Knot”
| (which some people might see as structurally equal to the Constrictor!),
| & “The Double Looped Interlocked Overhand Knot”
These are all supposed “knots” out of that make-believe world of
Hansel&Gretel’s [u]EKFR. Wanna jump up’n’down and shout “Hooray”
for any of them? – count them ? – classify them? – even tie them?!
And yet this book has contained and published them and it has been
reprinted for decades. To what good end? To me, the authors have lost
damNear all credibility for the amount of nonsense they have presented
– which thus renders any actual-factual presentations suspect, alas.

( And as far as the publisher’s hyping some clearly bogus knots
tally – be it 3600 (latest ed., post-Ashley, for H&G) or 3900 – , the sad
part is how many times both reviewers and other knots-book authors
have repeated the numbers as some kind of fact (irrespective of the
dubious value of even an accurate count in the bigger scheme of things),
rather than responsibly pointing out how obviously wrong they are! )

So, be prepared to say “maybe new, but … ”; don’t think
that there must be a Great Judgement rendered on behalf of society.
(And plenty of stuff will keep going on behind our backs, anyway.)

–dl*

32

Part of what attracted me to the field of knotting (not that I’ve made much progress) was an assumption that it was an Open Source (Free as in Freedom) area of endeavor. What if Mr. Clove had patented the Clove hitch? Would Mr. Constrictor or Mr. Snuggle then have been prevented from working on variations? Would the arborists be paying royalties to Mr. Clove and Mr. Buntline? Would there be wars over market share between Buntline Co. and Blare Hitch Corp.? Anyone ‘discovering’ ‘new’ knots is making progress thanks to a long tradition on knowledge sharing. I would hope the ‘guild’ would work to protect the free sharing of knot knowledge and enjoyment of finding new variations…

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=46849448925&ref=mf
video with text and decoration on knowledge as a collective effort.. Seeds and Open Source Software.

Stumbling on knotting and ABOK and then seeing this speech by Vandana Shiva made me think of knots as seeds of knowledge shared over the century. It’s hard for me to express the thought in a more ‘manly knotting’ kind of way right now but how would patenting knots effect on-line explanations, diagrams and photos of knots. It just sounds crazy to me. But most of Intellectual Property Rights is just crazy, progress- and innovation-blocking progress… I think Ben Franklin and other old wise notables said pretty much the same thing.. Vandana Shiva’s talk on ‘biopiracy’ may have a lot of parellels for the world of knotting.
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/25a/039.html

The basmati rice which farmers in my valley have been growing for centuries is today being claimed as ?an instant invention of a novel rice line? by a U.S. Corporation called RiceTec (no. 5,663,454).[2] The ?neem? which our mothers and grandmothers have used for centuries as a pesticide and fungicide has been patented for these uses by W.R. Grace, another U.S. Corporation.[3] We have challenged Grace's patent with the Greens in European Parliament in the European Patent Office.
Just using this board, writting in PHP an open source language, and freely sharing knot knowledge just seems to exemplify values that would reject 'ownership' or 'patenting' of knots...
33

Indeed, BambooFenceKnot, knots as structures (distinction on behalf of DL :slight_smile: ) can never be claimed as proprietary. Their usage/application, on the other hand, can be very proprietary. If a tight-knit usergroup never tells the world they use a specific knot that usage has become very local and the chances of that knowledge of that usage spreading become very slim. There is, IMHO, a strong correlation between numbers and knots. You cannot claim the “ownership of a number”, walk over to the patent office and register it as “your number”. If you apply a functional perspective to this type of tool usage, a totally different situation pops up, but that is not the topic of this thread.

34

Hi dear all, I deeply apologize for the errors in the drawings formerly (red line on Clove Hitch) and recently (Alove Hitch step#1). I will post a fresh set on the coming Monday. About these mistakes, I have to say I am not carefully cheched before I sent to Sweeney. I use CS3 (the new version of Illustrator) to do my drawings in which I have to make patches to cover some details in purpose to creat front and back layers. I admitted it is my fault. I am a retired designer, not just long, eventually I do my drawings with computer. My purpose is to name knots which are not named. Thanks here for everyone’s view.

y Chan

35

A tight-knit user group that keeps the knowledge of a knot’s usage from spreading won’t be able to charge fees or dictate how the knot should be used if someone re-discovers the usage… I think the discussion of patents and intellectual property rights may have developed off into interesting directions but not be relevant to Mr. Chan’s intentions in sharing the knots. It is a fascinating area being on of the key points in the debate over ‘corporate globalization’ and the most expensive and restrictive form of ‘protectionism’ in the trade agreements oxymoronically labeled ‘free’ trade.

I’m going to think about the number-knot correlation. How about a correlation between phrases and knots. Can words or phrases be patented? Should anyone be able to patent them. Can Nike ('globalization poster child having hopped it’s factories from Maine to Korea to Indonesia in search of the least restrictive labor, environmental regulations, wages..) patent ‘Just Do it’? Might there be parallels between songs or essays (really short works) and knots? I had never thought of it before but now I’m seein the Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report having encouraging his show to be (illegally?) re-mixed. News magazine articles on literature say that plagairism was common, a lot “the great works” of Western Literature plagairized (and re-mixed?) ealier works. Intellectual Property Rights, copyrights would have stifled a lot renowned work..

This Japanese Group, Tree Climbing Vest, was in the process of patenting a ‘new’ way of using arborist (tree climbing) equipment when I went to learn Tree Climbing. I took advantage of the opportunity to get the license but didn’t understand how the process could or should be protected. They may be motivated by safety concerns, or be hoping for income generated from the educational and liscensing fees. I’m not sure, but depending on how restrictive their rights are it seemed like a great way to stifle further innovation.

36

BambooFenceKnot, I agree that your interpretation of “free usage” covers more than my “tight-knot proprietary example”. Also that it is quite a hefty discussion, but I do not think that this thread is the right place to have it. Tellywot: what about continueing on: http://igkt.net/sm/index.php?topic=946.0 where Derek Smith started “Just Plain Crazy”?

37

Attached are the latest version of Chan’s drawings (I am posting on his behalf as he has trouble reducing the file size).

38

Thanks for the link I will check out the other thread. To put aside the patent (“intellectual property rights”) issues I like naming conventions that can go from Clove Hitch to ALove Hitch and BLove(d?) hitch. I was just concerned about the potential for the kind of abuse in the knot world that Vandan Shiva writes about in the agricultural world.

39

BambooFenceKnot, thanks for the video link to Vandana Shiva and the fascinating thought in your quote:

Vandana Shiva made me think of knots as seeds of knowledge shared over the century

Very true; knots are seeds of knowledge. They are the smallest unit, if we may call them that, of solutions to problems involving rope. If you have not figured out how a specific structure works and you apply it to something which may cost you your life then, upon malfunctioning of your glorious device, you pay a high price for your uncultivated knowledge. Also its usage by a user group may aid in defining and reinforcing its cultural identity (e.g. knot logo’s, headhunterknots, etc, etc,… endless list). On the other hand, if you view knots as packets of learning, or as Peter Suber (http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/knotlink.htm) puts it:

a good practical knot is both a nugget of hard-won technology and a thing of beauty.

a totally different knotgame unfolds. Who owns the knowledge - and why should they? Vandana Shiva, in her Monocultures of the Mind, made that point from an agricultural/technological point of view. Recently I learnt about a US-Italian firm (X?) who managed to prevent germination of their wheat (I believe), by mean of genetically coded keys. Really smart! Tinkering with this kind of matter may potentially render all of the world’s future crops infertile. You starve unless you pay Firm X for their genetic key. Good question why it should not hold for knotting-technology? There exist quite some claims to knots, ranging from industrial patents to usage based on professional proprietary exclusiveness; some outspoken, some tacit. Fut frankly I doubt any of them would hold up in court when subjected to non-superficial and fact-finding scrutiny.

As you mention; words and phrases should not be patented, but the Nike “Just Do It” slogan/meme generated billions of turnover for them, so they have a financial incentive, are keen on protecting that combination of words and branded it as “theirs”. Barack Obama’s utterance “Yes, we can!” falls into the same bucket, although I am not aware that he has patented his 3 famous words plus comma and exclamation mark, as yet. As for knots, we recently had Fred Wolf a Dutch angler from Wezep, who markets the knotless fish-hook (http://www.easy-2-hook.com) covered by a batch of patents. However, it is not so “knotless” as Fred would like us to believe. Check it out and try to determine whether his tanglement mechanism requires a knot or not? Fred is not claiming the “knot” by the way, but the little protuberance-eyelet combination, catching the loop swirled around the stem of the fish-hook and preventing it from becoming undone. So, he allowed Easy2hook knotters the confined freedom to cook up their own “knot”. Wolf merely dictated a partial solution in terms of tying method. However, now we are in real trouble, because suddenly the structure is not at the centre of attention but its tying methods (in fact a whole battery of solution directions). If they can be patented, then so can the structure, which is the product of that process.

Joop Knoop.

40

I think you are so right about patented genetic mutations - I have noticed that sellers of F1 hybrid houseplants forbid propagation (though quite how they enforce that in the case of a private buyer is beyond me); and the EU forbids that sale of “old” types of seed (ie from varieties which were grown before tests were done) unless a hugely expensive testing process is undertaken. Looking wider music piracy is an interesting example as more companies are trying to get buyers to legalise what they do by making the price attractive - they still have copyright however. And I can understand that an inventor of some sort of mechanical device would want to exploit that via a patent - the fact that a piece of rope, cord or fishline is used essentially as an accessory is outside the patent but the method of tying is included if it is intrinsic to the device itself eg the Niteize Figure 9 for joining ropes where a similar device might be manufactured to compete. A major difference between a mechanical contrivance and a knot is to my mind in the manufacture and sale - a patent is expensive and only if you can have made (in China?) and market a device will you see a payback and then only if you can take action to prevent copyists (ask the fashion industry!).

That said a set of knots making up an article might I think be capable of being a registered design with copyright eg a macrame bag. But any craft books I have only restrict copying of the book’s contents and do not extend to the creation of articles in the book (which would almost certainly be a pointless exercise). So unless you have a machine to “knit” bags why bother?

Finally anyone can call a knot whatever they like - the Zeppelin Bend or the Rosendahl Bend? The former is probably better known but so what? Ashley has enough duplication to satisfy anybody methinks.

Barry

Barry