Taking out your 1 and 7, that’s a decent five.
The Blackwall hitch is a marvellous and a very useful knot, which, unfortunately, has not received the attention it deserves by the community of knot tyers. People believe that it can tied only within “hooks”, and they do not realize that, for a rope, a hook is not much different from a bight ! 
The Blackwall hitch can be tied at the tip of any loop, around the one leg, therefore it is an amazing simple and efficient way to connect a loop and a line. “Connect a loop and a line”: a very useful thing.
Yeah, but the limit here is 5 slots. If I get to add more slots, even just one more, then the entire dynamic of all the knots changes.
If this is so, I know what I will do : I will take out the Blackwall hitch, the Alpine Butterfly midline loop and the Bowline ! Now that I can not have my #7, I do not need to be modest ! I will replace the Alpine Butterfly ( a TIB loop ) and the Bowline ( a PET loop ), with the “pet loop”, presented recently, which is TIB AND PET loop, at the same time ! So, I now have one more empty slot, which I think I will fill with the Strangle / double overhand knot. So, my strictly 5-slot list is the following :
1. Gleipnir.
2. pet Loop
3. Zeppelin knot
4. Round turn and two half hitches.
5. Strangle / double overhand.
1. Double Dragon Loop
The Double Dragon Loop beat out the Bowline because it’s more secure and I have been able to tie a Double Dragon everywhere I can tie a Bowline. Bowline is easily tied with one hand, but security is a priority for me. The DD can be tied in the bight, unlike the Bowline. As an end loop, the DD does not need a pre-knot, unlike the Zeppelin and the Butterfly.
2. Roundturn and Two Half Hitches
Not much to say, this knot just has to be here.
3. Reef
I was torn between the Reef and the Gleipnir. It was a compromise. The mid-air capability of the Gleipnir is quite valuable, but I can use the Blake Hitch listed below as a mid-air binder. Also, I don’t want to tie my shoes with a Gleipnir or any other knot on this list. Also, the Reef can serve as a bend.
4. Blake Hitch
The Blake Hitch beat out the Adjustable Grip Hitch because the Blake grips better and both these knots have basically one purpose, gripping.
5. Sheet Bend
The Sheet Bend beat the Zeppelin Bend because the mid-span capability of the Sheet Bend is quite valuable.
I wanted to get a fishing knot (line-to-lure) in there, but I couldn’t justify a fishing knot taking one-fifth of the slots. Anyway, this is all fantasy because in reality I don’t restrict myself to 5 knots. I have about 5 favorite knots per category and 12 categories.
Two knots mentioned here are new to me, and I’m delighted to know them. The Gleipnir weirds me out because it doesn’t seem like it could even count as a knot. It’s elegant in it’s simplicity, but it also kind of looks like voodoo to me. The fact that it works in mid-air is even crazier.
The other is Blake’s hitch, which is awesome. I love that it functions as a one-stranded Prusik-type knot, and it certainly seems to have a more robust grip than the adjustable grip hitch.
These two knots have bumped two others from my short list of best knots, so Festy, thank you for the gift two new knots as a result of your post.
I need a stopper in my list, but I can’t justify taking off one of the knots I listed.
If you have a loop, you can use it as a pulley simulator. You’ll get more tension than the Gleipnir, have better stability, and you’ll use about half as much line. Win-win-win.
There are many other bowline-like loops ( post-eye-tiable = PET loops ) that are far more secure than the “common” bowline - and one can always “lock” the “common” bowline “afterwards” very easily, if the application is demanding, by a second collar and an additional tuck of the tail through its nipping loop - like it happens in the Janus bowlines or the Lee s and Luca most secure locked bowlines, for example. Sailors always use the bowline as a mooring knot for a security reason that has nothing to do with the slippage of the tail : a knot that has to be untied from the standing part at a second stage, after the closed bight of the eye has been opened up, and the loop has been detached from its anchor, is a dangerous thing ! It can be caught up somewhere, and present security problems . That is the main disadvantage of all non-PET loops, like the Double Perfection loop / Dragon : they require a two-stage untying, and the second stage has to happen when the loop has already been opened up, i.e., when the rope is free to be pulled out, and the remaining knot-to-be-untied is moving along with the pulling object far from the desperate untying hands !
Noope ! The adjustable gripping hitch is an adjustable gripping hitch ! You can not adjust the Blake hitch without moving it, as a whole, on the main line, i.e. changing the point of the main line it is gripping.
However, I think that a rope gripping hitch is a somewhat special knot - one does not attach a line on a line with the help of a gripping friction hitch very often, because, most of the time, he/she can achieve the same thing by other, simpler means : a bend, a loop, etc. A rope-gripping hitch is, to my view, a luxury to a 5 seats UV…
There is no such a thing as a “mid-span capability of the Sheet bend” ! There is a mid-span capability of each and every mid-span bight / loop, which can serve as a means to attach things on it later, at a second stage. What you are talking about is a mid-line loop, in general ( which is missing from your collection - I believe that it is an indispensable tool for the knot tyer…), and not the Sheet bend in particular. I thought that you were to include your favourite Span loop, so I could advertise the pet Loop a little more , but you did not. A more easy choice would be the Butterfly loop.
As a fantasy, of course, this is quite an amusing game : It is a rough sketch of each knot tyer s knowledge, experience and personal style, more than a snapshot of the knotLand itself, but it is entertaining…
P.S. Edited. The Double Dragon is a fine PET AND TIB loop !
Notice my choice : the double overhand bend, that is also a hitch, the strangle. You can insert two knots in the same slot by that trick !
This doesn’t pass the sniff test. If the rope is under tension, pulling itself away, you need to be using a load-releasing hitch of some sort, not a loop.
Tell a sailor to use a slipped buntline releasing hitch as a mooring knot - but do not forget, please, to carry your shepherd s crook to defend yourself !
I can’t picture what you mean. Do you have a diagram or picture of this?
And knot4u, thanks very much for your description of the reason you chose the double dragon. I’ve seen it before, but it looked complicated and I was happy with the loops I already knew, so I didn’t bother learning it, but I like that it’s secure and easier to untie than a perfection loop (which I really like but seldom use because I don’t want to risk it jamming on me), and a little less awkwardly aligned with the standing part than the zeppelin loop.
The double dragon’s main competitor in my mind would be the yosemite bowline: good security, doesn’t need the pre-tied overhand, won’t jam. How would you compare the two?
I just noticed how easily the double dragon falls apart once you loosen it and pull the main loop back through the collar (I think I’m referring to the collar correctly?). That’s very appealing to me compared with completely retracing the path of the yosemite bowline to undo it.
If you have a loop on one end, you can thread the other end through the loop, much like a pulley to get some mechanical advantage on whatever you are binding, almost the same as a Trucker’s Hitch. Then, it’s just a matter of tying off with half hitches.
Did you find a memorable/easy way of tying it as an end loop that you can thread through an object?
ref:
http://igkt.net/sm/index.php?topic=3682.msg21356#msg21356
Yep. I watched this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tj3mXk_FbBk. After doing it once or twice, I found it pretty easy to commit to memory. I learned it yesterday and on waking this morning, I’m confident I can do it from memory without any trouble.
I’ll look over this more, but I see many openings for easy error of what to wrap/tuck where/when.
Then, a Half Hitch must be part of your five, or end that Trucker with a Roundturn and Two Half Hitches. If we all get a Half Hitch as a bonus knot, then my list changes.
I’m abstaining from making a list of five per the original intent of this thread. I’d hope the OP learns a wider variety of knots, but it’s an interesting discussion. 