"Tackled" hitches - a new class of tight hitches.

New Knot Investigations
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( I will post some pictures first, because this Windows 10 / Edge … and I do not want to lose them, again !

In short, I had arrived at those hitches, by trying to :

  1. improve the angles of the pulling and pulled segments of rope, so the mechanical advantage of the Cow-hitch / Zigzag hitch arrangement of interlinked bights is implemented more efficiently.
  2. decrease the area of contact / friction between the most tensioned segments and the surface of the poll during the ( alternate ) puling of the ends. This way the wraps can be pre-tensioned more easily, therefore more tightly.

Those hitches are the tightest two-wrap hitches I had ever tied - and one way to know it ( other that the high pitch of the sound the hollow pole makes during tensioning ) is to count the amount of anti-inflammatory pills and pain killers I have to take for my back pain…

More, shortly…

Simplest hitch ( tackled ) 2.JPG

Simplest hitch ( tackled ) 4.JPG

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The procedure / tying method is straightforward, and easy : You can tie any of the dozens hitches which can be " tackled " this way, and be transformed into VERY tight hitches, by either of two ways :

  1. Start from a double loop with communicating bights, as shown in the last picture.
  2. Start from any end-of-line loop, of a length, say, the 3/4 ths of the circumference of the pole, roll it around the pole, reeve its ends through the tip of its bight and then take them back, at the nub, and reeve them through it again, to secure them.
    The difficult thing is to find the most simple possible loops, so their nubs would not become very bulky when they will be fed by the two ends which will penetrate them for the second time, but also avoid the too simple loops, so their nubs would not “walk” towards the tips of their eyes. The optimum loop must be slim, but also must be able to remain fixed, and not become elongated and, at the end, cover the whole circumference of the pole.
    ( Of course, the first loop I had tried was the Butterfly loop - but when it was penetrated by its ends, it seemed too “fat” to me… I believe we can find simpler / slimmer solutions )
    The careful reader would notice that the “red” hitch is TIB - this is one more condition I am struggling with right now - besides my back pain.

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Ceteris paribus, how tight a hitch is, is revealed by how much it can withstand, or how less it slips, under, a lengthwise pull - because that depends on how oblique the wraps become, so on how less tight, and how efficiently the secure “locks” of the ends do not allow material be fed from the ends into the wraps.
I have seen that the resistance of the humble Simplest tackled hitch, by being “tackled”, becomes remarkable !
See the attached pictures, where this most elementary hitch shows its abilities. We should not underestimate the potential, into a compound knot or a rope-mechanism, of a properly placed overhand knot.

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Eureka ! :slight_smile:
( It was under my nose, but it had a few twists of its own which it seems I had not digested till now. )
Possibly one of the simplest Tackled hitches, easy to tie and untie, ROCK SOLID, and, last but not least, TIB !
It is based on nothing else than the " Double Butterfly loop " ( I do not know if this thing exists, and I had no time to look at Ashley, but it is a double TIB loop with the same nub as the Butterfly loop and bend, so I believe it does, and I call it like this. )
See the attached picture, of the loose knot. Tomorrow, first thing in the morning, IF f I have not died from my back pains, I will take and post pictures of the beauty-and-the-beast at the same time I hold in my hands.

P.S. Actually, what people call “Double Butterfly loop” does not have communicating bights / eyes. Nevertheless, the nub of this Tackled hitch is identical to the nub of Butterfly bend or loop, except that the penetrating lines are doubled - so I will keep calling it " Butterfly Tackled hitch ".

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Some first pictures of the Butterfly Tackled hitch - the most tight hitch I know, yet TIB, easy to tie and untie, and acceptably complex, for what it is able to accomplish.
( I have a gut feeling that I will not find any tighter TIB hitch than that, ever…and since I have already abandoned any further search of bends and double loops ( too easy to tie something “new”, that works OK ), and loops ( the Ampersand bowline and the Plait loop are OK ), I wonder what am I going to do from now on - exercises on knotting litter-ature, perhaps ? :slight_smile: )

A hint to tie it : Anticipate the required length of the loop(s), so you will not run the danger to make the two parts “kiss” each other prematurely, and tension the nub in a first stage, before you start pulling the ends : this way it will not “walk” ( it will, a little bit, but not much : after a while, it will become stationary, because each of the two interlinked loops will not allow the other to move further ).
A reminder : in all symmetric two-wrap tight hitches ( as my previous favorite, the Bull Clove hitch ), the final tensioning should better be done alternately : by pulling the one end after the other, and continuing this procedure a few times, until the hitch becomes rock solid. As they are designed to be tensioned by pulling the ends against the pole ( perpendicularly to the surface of the hitched object ), one efficient way to do this is ( provided the height where the object is located permits it ) to use one s hands AND feet, as rowers do… :slight_smile: Only beware of your back - because I know one stupid fellow who was not.

Butterfly Tackled hitch 1.JPG

Butterfly Tackled hitch 4 (A4).JPG

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seems complicated. double trucker’s hitch MA?

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On the contrary, it seems a (very) simplified trucker s hitch to me… :slight_smile:
One trucker s hitch has two fixed loops, so two trucker s hitches, side-by-side, would have four ! Here, you have ONE.
Besides, the whole knot/arrangement is TIB. I doubt that you can tie two parallel trucker s hitches, and manage to make the whole arrangement TIB - even if you use, as loops, slipped overhand knots.
You should “see” the Butterfly nub of the knot, without paying attention to where the “limbs” go and how they are linked to each other. If you isolate the “core” of the 8 “arms” of this octopus :slight_smile: ( perhaps I should had named it "octopus hitch " ! :slight_smile: ), you can understand how it works. As I said in a previous post, it is nothing but a fixed loop where the ends are reeved through its eye and then back again through its nub. You can transform almost any fixed loop to its “tackled” version, and then use it as a hitch. Most of them have a tight enough nub, which is able to nip the two penetrating returning ends quite securely - mind you that the tension in each of them is divided by half. Also, the fact that the ends, when they turn around the tip of the loop before they re-enter into the nub, are in contact to the surface of the pole, enhances this security even more. Sometimes I had loosened them from the nub, but the hitch was remaining tensioned, because they were so much squeezed under the tip of the loop and the surface of the pole.

I had also tied some other variations, where there are two individual, not-interlinked loops - but they were more complex, more bulky, and, because they were not equilibrated, they were “locked” at different distances from the tips of the bights - an ugly sight.
As it happens to all knots, you have to tie it at least 12 times correctly, to appreciate it. Then, you can judge how complex it is, but only then, not at the start, when you only “see” entangled lines ad not the pattern where the logic of the mechanism drives them.

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What is the "simplest" single loop ? The overhand loop ( ABoK#1009 ). In this sense, the "simplest" Tackled hitch is based on this loop.
  1. Tie an overhand loop.
  2. Reeve its ends through its eye.
  3. Now, reeve them back through its nub. ( Each end can go through many “openings” of the nub, but this is secondary : the nub of this loop is sufficiently tight, and it will secure a penetrating line, independently of the particular path through the nub it will follow. )
  4. You are done ! You have your first Tackled hitch. Now, find something to wrap it around, and then start pulling and pulling the ends, the one after the other… In fact, there is only ONE thing you must remember, and you should never forget : your back !
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so you can change any loop knot into a self-lock trucker’s hitch…

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Do not call anything that uses a mechanical advantage as a " trucker s hitch " ! :slight_smile: :slight_smile: The block and tackle simple machine, which is the rope “mechanism” which corresponds to the lever, has been studied by Archimedes and Heron, looong before trucks and drivers ! :slight_smile:
You mean, use any loop, and “roll” a rope-made block and tackle simple machine around an object, to make a tight hitch. Indeed you can.
Now, there are two things you should pay attention to : When we say “any”, we do not mean it ! :slight_smile: In this configuration, first, you need a nub which would not be able to “walk” towards the tip of the eye, when it is dragged by the two lines which form it. This is a requirement an ordinary fixed loop does not have to satisfy - but a loop suitable for a Tackled hitch does. Then, you also need a nub which will not be severely deformed, if/when/while the penetrating ends are pulled against the pole, i.e., in a direction perpendicular to the axis of the loop. This is a more strict condition than one would expected.
I have not been able to figure out a simpler / slimmer proper nub, which would remain fixed on its position, and not “walk” or rotate around itself, under those circumstances. Perhaps I have missed something… tie and try ! :slight_smile:

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Some more pictures ( all day, because of my spinal cord injuries caused by tight-hitching ! ! :slight_smile: :), I could nt tie even a f . overhand knot ! So, all that I could do, was to take some pictures of the hitch already tied on the poll… )

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From the other side , which is “different” ( it is : one segment is a few mm longer ! :slight_smile: )

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I would like to mention two more things :

  1. When we start from a TIB loop, we end with a TIB hitch - as, perhaps, it should had been expected, from the path we drive the ends of the loop through, first, its own eye and, then, its nub. That means that, if we do NOT insert a TIB loop into our TIB-ness problem, we would not get back a TIB solution - unless we figure out different, more convoluted paths for the ends, and we are lucky.
  2. Those two-wrap hitches are meant to / should be easy to untie, because they may serve as temporary solutions. ( The 3/4 wraps TackleClamp hitch is a more permanent knot ). Therefore, we should use nubs which can be released with easy, even after the hitch has been tensioned as much as those hitches can be tensioned. This is a constrain which reduces the number of possible solutions more than we may think.

For the record, see the images of the other Butterfly-looking tackled hitch I had mentioned in a previous post. As you can see, it is bulkier than my more recent solution. To refer to the previous paragraphs, it is TIB, just because the ( inverted or not ) Butterfly loop is TIB - BUT it is difficult to untie, because its nub does not present a convenient “handle” which one can grab and manipulate, to loosen some segments. Last but not least, its nub is bulkier : the two lines of the Butterfly loop are no only linked / hooked to each other, but they form (slipped ) overhand knots, while in my more recent solution they only form two interlinked nipping loops - which leads to a simpler and slimmer knot.

Am I sure that I had found the simplest/slimmest/more easy to untie solution ? Of course NOT ! :slight_smile: The interested reader may try his/hers own hand, and see what can be done. Starting from a fixed single loop, or a double loop with communicating bights, we may arrive to a plethora of Tackled two-wrap hitches - those I has shown should only be considered as the first steps of this journey.

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4 ( B&W).JPG

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Maybe you can share your TIB method in picture, instead of verbal description.

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Was nt the method shown in Reply#4 clear enough ? ( The pictures were not, since I had taken them in the middle of the night, without a flash, but I believe the lack of sharpness plays no role int his case )
However, generally, I avoid the presentation of particular tying methods, because there is this dangerous infectious DESEASE in the knot tyers community, to confuse a knot with its tying method ! ! Many people seem to be interested not in the nutritional value of the foods / the value of the knots themselves, but only in their cooking RECIPES / their tying methods. Each and every knot can be tied with many different tying methods, and, most importantly, every knot tyer conceive the same knot differently than the others, and may prefer a different tying method, for complex reasons ( having to do with the way different minds “see” 3D shapes ) we can not understand.
Moreover, I believe that people who do not tie knots by viewing pictures of them, either because they are too lazy to do that, or because they do not want to “lose” their valuable time ( and prefer, instead, to watch another TV rubbish, for example ), should better NOT tie knots ! They should better use fasteners, or other means to join their ropes, because when you tie a knot blindly, without understanding what you do, sooner or later you will make a mistake you may regret : knots are dangerous things, and falsely or improperly tied and dressed knots are even more so !
I ALWAYS provide pictures of the knots I tie - I am never hiding behind a vague “verbal description”, as you say, to “save” my time, as many others do in this Forum ! !

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As usual with hitches there’s a risk that people see advantages and trucker’s hitches that aren’t there, usually by inappropriate geometrical comparison to a trucker’s hitch, inappropriate because the geometrical comparison does not extend properly to the circle on which the hitch is tied especially as compared with any other simple hitch of the same number of wraps over which that advantage should be measured.

I am not for a second saying these are not very good knots, and I do not dispute the qualities xarax mentions. I haven’t tried them yet to see (actually I’ve tried something close enough to the simple one to have a very good guess)

Regarding the “simple” hitch. The interlocked U turns pull two rope segments (in and out) against two rope segments. That’s an even advantage. One can say in a sense I think that there is a slight bit of advantage where the rope turns radially outward at the overhand knot, but no more than for many other radially extending hitches where that turn pulls against the tail, like say a timber hitch (as opposed to hitches that like to extend tangentially, like a clove hitch). I’ve talked about this kind of pseudo trucker’s hitch like tail loops a couple of times before. They can help to some significant extent with the surging and the use of hands. So the advantage of it is very similar to a two wrap timber hitch ( ok, the timber loop end might fall apart, but anyway any decent two wrap hitch has twice the grab of a single wrap hitch and this is part of the illusion of the u-turns. It’s not that they don’t help, but.. so would continuing around the SAME way. They might help in other ways though like locking and surging.)

The butterfly thing is interesting in that it appears to leverage four segments (counting ingoing and outgoing) against two. This is the kind of counting you need to see to have real mechanical advantage. In this case though, it’s not quite so doubled as it appears, because those 4 parts pulling are drawn from two separate ends going in the same direction. You can pull on both at once in one direction with half of your stength distributed to each! Again, this is not to say it’s a bad knot. In fact the fact that the tails come out the same way and that one will hold gains while the other is pulled, does mean that the hitch can be fed tension more easily from both of its ends instead of creating one limp end like many hitches, and this does produces a sort of 2x advantage of its own if you can alternate that tension and hold gains as xarax described. That’s a very different kind of “advantage” from a pulley system though. I agree with xarax that there is nothing trucker’s hitch about any of this.

To me, the main purpose of a tight hitch should ideally be to hold in gains from things pulling much harder than my arms, building ever increasing tightness to produce ever increasing resistance to slip along the pole. Maybe I ask too much. If I only need tightness that I can create in my hands not to resist things that might then pull harder, then a tight hitch and binder become only barely different ideas, the main issue being the ability to lock in gains enough for me to tie the binder off. And if I must let it be tightened by the load that is stronger than my hands, then I’m not sure how useful alternating tightening is.

There is clearly a place for this kind of knot though, indeed on hard smooth poles, where ANY small amount of give-back while tying off a binder will be too much, or where eventual stretch from the load might loosen a binder on such a hard surface. The best advantages of the butterfly tackle seem to be for human, spinal supported, levels of forces where it can be conveniently tightened in its best way.

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Indeed - and to any two-wrap hitch based on the Cow hitch, where the 4 legs of the two interlinked Us are almost parallel to each other - because, regarding mechanical advantages, angles matter ! THAT was the purpose of this series : segments at “right” angles - which here means : parallel segments.

There is no “illusion” of U wraps. There is a 2 : 1 mechanical advantage in a properly “tacked” two-wrap hitch, while there can be NO such advantage in ANY one-wrap hitch - simply because the Standing End of a one-wrap hitch can be not pulled tangentially to the surface of the pole. That means that the 4 legs of the two interlinked Us are not parallel during pulling / pre-tensioning ( the Standing End, while it is being pulled against the pole, makes a 90 degrees angle with the other three ), so a great part of the mechanical advantage evaporates.
Now, one may argue : Why can we not pull the Standing End tangentially to the surface of the pole, i.e., in parallel with the other three legs converging in the same point ? The answer is simple - but it is better if one also gets the “feeling” of it, by actually tying and trying those tight hitches. Because, however tight a “tight hitch” would become ( at the end of the pre-tensioning ), at the beginning, when we start pulling the Standing End, it can not withstand a forced rotation, so it will simply re-adjust itself, it will rotate, and during the most critical stage of the pulling its Standing End would become perpendicular to the surface of the pole, and not tangential to it. Even if the hitch will not be rotated as a whole, its nub will, and this will deform it badly and destroy its locking abilities.

It is not - but I am afraid to get it you have to tie and try it first ! :slight_smile:
A hint : the segments of ropes work as “springs” : they can be elongated, they can accumulate and they can store tensile forces. This is something one loses when one analyses a block and tackle simple machine, made from ropes with, supposedly, fixed rope lengths. I have seen this effect in action : Hitches like those work much better when they are tied on nylon rope, which is more stretchy.

Noope ! :slight_smile: When you will tie and try it, you will see another thing that you miss : During the pulling of one end ( remember, you have to pull the ends alternately, so each one of them receives your whole strength ), only three ends are tensioned - the end returning to you becomes slack, because there is so much friction at the contact points of the three interlinked Us.
So, you pull the one end of “your” U, the other end of this U gets lose, you have two more ends ( of the “other” U pointing towards you ) which assist you ( they never get loose ! ), and the opposite tip of the main U / loop coming towards you with half the speed you pull the one end of “your” U. This would had result in a mechanical advantage of 2:1 - IF you were not helped, during your effort, by the tension of the legs of the “other” U, which do not become loose. It may not be 4:1, because the other U may not support half of the load at all tomes, but it would be close. You have to see those four umbilical segments as four springs, three tensioned one and one non-tensioned.
Anyway, the talk about mechanical advantages is pointless, and it hides more than it reveals - because of the important factors left unaccounted : the friction at the contact points of the interlinked Us, and the springy nature of the segments of ropes. The important thing is to “see” how those hitches exploit fully the mechanical advantage of the Cow hitch, and are self-locking at the same time.
In short, there is no hitch that even comes close to what a tackled two-wrap tight hitch can do. The Butterfly Tackled hitch I had presented made the pole scream, literally, like no other hitch I had ever tied. Moreover, it opens up in a fraction of a second, just by pushing the one bight of its nub over the other, and loosening the “lock”.

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In general, we can not speak about a knot if we have not tied it - and by “tied it”, I mean correctly, and a dozen, at least, times ! By just “seeing” the images of a knot one can understand how he can tie it, and get a rough idea about its behaviour, if it is related to something he has already tied in the past. However, when one sees an altogether new knot, like the ones shown in this series, he should not jump into conclusions prematurely.
I had tied dozens of two-wrap hitches, and I had though I knew how they worked - until there was this bolt out of the blue, the ingenious Alaskan hitch, tied by SquareBanksAlaska, which put me out off my illusion. And, just lhe very last night, the Simplest Locked Cow hitch was also a reminder of the fact that a rope is a “simple” thing which has many degrees of freedom, so, a tangled rope ( = a knot ) can do many more, and different, things than we can ever imagine.

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I do not dispute that local advantages are likely created by surging (friction loosening one place and tightening another). These advantages can be important. In the end they won’t result in an overall average tension in the individual wraps greater than the tension pulled on the ends, not once tension finally spreads around evenly (if it ever can), but they can help significantly to get it there.

They aren’t though generally what some casual onlooker sees when they think they see (or some suggestion makes them think they see) a trucker’s hitch.

It’s not actually hard to tie such true trucker’s hitch mechanisms either of course, it’s just probably not very practically valuable.

simultaneous posting.. I agree, I cannot speak about how the knot does work yet. I only wanted to speak to a particular way that someone should not try to “see” that it does.