This thread topic is taking on the character of a contest of knowledge.
To use your phrasing, the idea it's a "contest of knowledge" to *me* only exists in your narrative. It doesn't exist in mine, nor, I expect, in anyone else's.
An alternative way you might consider viewing it is “disagreeing” or “showing you things that you don’t seem to have considered”, and in that alternative perspective you may consider saying “here’s why I don’t think that is true” or “ah, good point” (depending on which is appropriate).
If you’re too focused on “the contest” to actually get into a discussion where we can actually explore disagreements, then I guess we can’t do this. Oh well.
Small scale tests are far easier to do and therefore the feedback rate is higher. In the time it takes you to ponder how you're going to set up your jamming threshold test I can do it with small line without leaving the couch and tell you what your answer is going to be.
This statement has the character of a contest of knowledge and experience.
I’ll pick this first one as an example, but the point is the same for the rest.
Yes, I think you’re doing it wrong and that the way I’m advocating is better. I think that is fine, since it’s about knots, it might actually be true, and it is not adversarial. Sharing knowledge is all about showing each other how we can be doing things better, and if you think you know a better way of doing something and that I’m making a mistake, I would love to hear it.
Yes, if you’re going to make it into a “contest” and take that side, I think you’re going to end up losing this one and so I wouldn’t recommend it. I don’t think it makes me “better” than you or that the resulting “contest” is of any importance, however. There’s no gloating over “winning” and no shame in “losing” such trivialities as it is completely toxic to frame “who gets to learn” as “who has to lose”. I’m happy to “lose” contests here if that means I get to learn, and I suggest you adopt a similar attitude. No one else here, either in my previous interactions or all the reading in between, seems to share this sensitivity.
Small modification by who's version of reality?
I meant it as a compliment, not as a diminishment. If you can take a well known and well-performing knot and add one simple operation that improves it, that is better than doing something entirely new that will need both vetting and committing to memory.
For example, one of my favorite knots I’ve learned here is the simple “Lehman lock” to the bowline, since it is such a simple and physically small modification that works so cleanly and doesn’t have the dressing ambiguity of the Yosemite finish. It is my go to for secure eye knots in everything except climbing (where I suspect that it might work fine, but it’s easy enough to add another pass through), and even as a midline eye knot when I know the direction of loading. Even my preferred tie in knot is simply a “small modification” of Lehman’s small modification, and that additional modification itself could be seen as an alternative implementation of his ideas demonstrated in his EBDB. “Small” is good, in this context.
You assume incorrectly. No - it doesn't jam as you purport.
This comment actually does “have the character of a contest of knowledge and experience” above and beyond asserting a novel concept that I happen to disagree with. Because instead of introducing a new argument or perspective to further the discussion towards agreement and learning, it’s just a flat out “nuh uh” and posturing as if your say so is worth more than mine. If you were more interested in learning than not-losing you might instead ask “Did you actually succeed in getting one to jam? Under what conditions? How did you tie it, exactly?” and see if you can’t replicate it.
Again, assuming I have tied it correctly (eye through the center again, right?), it does in fact jam at sufficient tension in eye loading (which, as you’ve admitted, you haven’t tested yourself). I have a jammed knot sitting on my table and I can mail it to you if you’d like. Fair warning, it isn’t in EN human rated rope, but it does exist and hint pretty strongly about what you’re going to find in your rope.
This statement makes no sense. Might need a diagram to clarify what you mean by 'eye tail'.
It is a little hard to follow, I’ll try again. If you tie a bowline with a bight you end up with three eyes; the eye of the parent knot forms two while the tail forms one.
If a knot is TIB, you make it by pulling a bight through things and looping around and shit. When you pull it through something, that “intermediate knot” now has an “eye” that is functioning like a “tail”. With some things, like the butterfly loop, this eye is the eye to be used and the knot is done. In others, like a bowline on a bight, it is looped around and snugged up so that there is no eye left and no “tail”. However, when doing this, you cannot loop it around only one of the standing parts without passing the end through and making it no longer TIB. If you keep things TIB and loop around both, then both of those standing parts will now exit the knot through the same bight and tension between them will offset load the loop. The choice just becomes where you would like the offset loading to be, or whether you’d like to give up TIB.
Your notional understanding of what 'offset' is (within the context of an end-to-end joining knot) - appears to be incorrect.
[...] 'ring' loading the eye of a #1053 Butterfly would be an example of inducing an 'offset' loading profile on the knot core. In a sense, take #1053 Butterfly and then cut the eye. The 2 cut legs of the former 'eye' - if bi-axially loaded - would now be an offset loading profile.
But, I am not sure what all of this has to do within the broader topic of this thread?
No, you get it fine. Ring loading is offset loading for 1053. You don’t have to cut the other end because the knot can’t know the difference.
The relevance is that the thread is about loops that can be loaded and perform well omnidirectionally. One of these directions the load can be applied is for the eye to be pulled apart in ring loading, which induces an offset loading profile on 1053. Since every TIB knot presented (and I argue that all possible) are offset loaded under some direction of loading, saying “this knot is worse because it’s offset loaded” can only be a valid decision criteria if you narrow your set of applications from “omni” to “less than omni” – or at least prioritize certain loading directions over others.
>You can wait until you get a rigorous test with EN human rated rope before you believe it if you want, but it won't be any less true in the meantime.
This statement has the character of a contest of knowledge.
That’s what it feels like from the inside when you make a bold statement that is wrong and then dig in when someone points out that it is wrong. It’s entirely possible to entertain corrections without viewing them as an affront or digging in, and this is a very valuable skill to develop and put to use.
For example, I have said definitively that there exist no TIB eye knots without an unused eye that are not offset loaded in at least one direction. This, like your statement, is kinda bold as it is a statement of impossibility. You could prove me wrong (assuming I’m wrong) by simply showing me a counterexample. If you tell me that I’m flat out pong wrong there, I would be excited to be corrected. I wouldn’t take it as you “wanting to compete” because so long as you can actually show me where I went wrong, “wanting to share knowledge with peers” would be just as fitting an explanation and it would be silly (and defensive) to jump to assuming the worst instead of assuming the best. One doesn’t have to identify with or fight to preserve their beliefs when they’re wrong, nor does one have to be even slightly bothered when the other person is secretly or not so secretly getting off on having “one upped” them. If you genuinely teach me something surprising, I’m happy for you to have that if it’s important to you; you’d have earned it, after all. If it’s not, great.
I am simply saying that big knots in some material behave similarly to small knots in the same material, and therefore the test in big rope will be well predicted by the results of the quick and informal test with the small rope. You can take it personally and disengage if you want, but I promise you that it isn’t necessary and that it’s not a personal statement. It’s just a statement about the behavior of knots in rope.
