Yoke hitch

[xarax]

Do you need a two-wrap hitch which grips an object so tightly, that you can not force it to slide on its surface towards ANY direction ? That you can not even force it to revolve around the axis of a round sleek pole ? Here it is - and I am not aware of any one else.
Essentially, it is an “abbreviated” TackleClamp hitch, which has one less wrap - but, what is most important, it can be pre-tensioned by pulling the one, and the one only, end - i.e., it does not require the pulling of both ends, the one after the other, alternately, as most tight hitches do.
The ways to “finish” this hitch, and secure the Tail End, are many : we have to attach the Tail End within a bight, at its tip, and this can be achieved by using a variety of knots. In the pictures of the hitch shown in this thread, I had used a slipped overhand knot, entangled into the tip of the bight so that the two legs of its slipped tail are encircled by both Us, the rim of the overhand knot and the rim of the bight. I thought that this was the simplest solution, which, on the one hand is very secure, and, on the other, it retains the TIBness of the hitch. A yet simpler solution is shown at the fourth attached picture. However, a curious knot tyer may find another, even simpler and also very secure solution which I may had missed.
There is a strange thing in this hitch : From the moment one starts to pull the end, the hitch and/or the pole rotate around their common axis, and this means two things : In order to exploit the advantage of a direct pull against the pole ( i.e., a pull perpendicularly to the axis and the surface of the pole ), one has either to revolve around the pole, or to make the pole rotate around itself ! On a pole that can not rotate, or that it has not enough room around it to enable the pull of its Standing End from different directions, one may not be able to tension this hitch as much as it takes.

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[xarax]

More pictures of this hitch, so one can get a feeling of how simple it is : it does not consume more material than many much less tight hitches. In the first three pictures, I have not included the slipped overhand knot “finish”, to facilitate the reading of the knot s structure.
When I tied it around a glass tube, I could nt pre-tension it, of course. Tied on this particular rope, of this material and size, it starts to grip and squeeze the glass tube of this particular diameter when the two crossing points of the tackled wraps are at diametrically opposite points, as shown in the pictures. On a less sleek or more thick pole, it may start to grip it even before this point - so one has to take many parameters into account, and even then he may not be able to predict how much, exactly, the two crossing points of the tackled wraps will approach each other at the very end, when the hitch will become as much pre-tensioned as possible. The optimum distance between the two sides of the “yoke” is about 1/4th of the pole s circumference, so the three umbilical cords are almost straight, and the friction forces on them, which impede their pulling, from the surface of the pole is not very strong - but we can seldom achieve this optimum ! So, to avoid the danger to have the two parts “kiss” each other prematurely, before the hitch has been maximally pre-tensioned, I prefer to take the slack of the knot, and start pulling its end, sooner rather than later.

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[xarax]

In those pictures, we can see how much the Yoke hitch looks like an “abbreviated” TackleClamp hith. However, tied around a not-so-fragile object, it is easy to make the two-wrap-sections side much more extended than the three-wrap-sections side : this hitch is a two-wrap hitch, and we may see this more easily if we tie it around a thicker pole.

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[xarax]

Photos of the Yoke hitch ( taken from slightly different angles ) in its most “extreme” initial position, where the two parts of the tackle “kiss” each other at the “rear” side of the hitch - just before the start of the pre-tensioning. However, if we start from this position, the hitch would probably “close”, and become maximally pre-tensioned, too early, before the two parts of the tackle re-approach each other as closely as we want : I reckon that a distance of about 1/2 pole diameter would be the optimum ?

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[xarax]

Two pictures of the “loose knot”, where all its elements are in the position we would had wished them to be, when the knot will be maximally tightened. We see that the two parts of the tackle, the two pairs of the interlinked Us, are at a distance of about half a pole diameter - but that is difficult to achieve in practice, because the smaller the distance, the greater the danger a slight miscalculation ( of how much the wraps will slide on the surface of the pole before they start to grip it ) will lead in a prematurely “closed” hitch, when the distance would be zero, and the wraps would not yet be pre-tensioned as much as we would had wished. That is why one should better start from a position he anticipates that will lead in a distance of about one pole diameter, and then anything more he gains ( = any shorter umbilical cords he gets ), by pulling the end even more forcefully, will be a bonus - but following this conservative tactic he will not run the danger to be left with a closed, locked, but still not very tight hitch ! Because, and that is a good point to re-state it again, when this hitch is pre-tensioned, and it is locked, it remains locked for ever ! No way one can untie it - I had left the end of the Tail like this on purpose, because that is how it will look, when you apply the only trick you can do to untie such a tight, permanent knot : you cut it… Meaning that if you had tied it in the middle / in-the-bight of a rope, now you have not only untied it, but you have also made the one rope two !

( I had cut the rope just where it exits the slipped overhand knot - which slipped overhand knot can not be un-slipped, of course -, and then I had inserted a stick into its bight, and using it as a level, I had pulled the cut end off its casting. When one does this, the nub of the overhand knot is loosened a little bid, and then he can untie the whole hitch easily ).

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[Ruby]

loose？

[xarax]

Loose - because the knot you see is set up, but it is not tight. Its segments follow the path they would had followed if/when they were/are tensioned ( and I did that just to show the knot as it would look in its final stage, when it is tensioned, i.e., when the two parts of the yoke have approached each other at the “front” side of the pole, not in its initial stage, when they are close but still at the “rear” side of the pole, as in the pictures of the previous post ). Really tensioned / tight Yoke hitches are those shown in the first post, and in the thread about the tackled hitches.

[xarax]

Why, on Earth, do the Tackled hitches work, against all odds ? I am proud to ask this question, and I am more proud to answer : I do not know. What is the most precious achievement of the human civilization that should be maintained, at all costs, is its orientation towards the unknown.
We have two wraps, which are dragged, by their crossing points, towards each other - so one would expect that they will slide, they will rotate ( =revolve around the axis of the pole ), and, eventually, those crossing points will 'kiss" each other, and any motion of the parts of the mechanism ( the two parts of the yoke, the two interlinked Us ) would come to a halt.
Yet, this does not happen. By pulling the end(s), and reducing the amount of rope length from the hitch, two things happen, simultaneously : First, the wraps shrink, the length of their circumference is decreased. Second, the wraps slide, they rotate, the two umbilical cords in between them are shortened, and their crossing points approach each other. It seems that, at some point for unknown to us reasons, those two things change gear, but they put a different one : the one starts to happen more intensely than the other, and once the previous equilibrium ( where both were happening at the same pace ) is “broken”, there is no turn back. From now on the wraps shrink faster than they slide, and their shrinkage prevents them from sliding as fast/much as they did, and, at some point, it makes them be “glued” onto the surface of the pole - and then they can not slide and rotate any more : any subsequent pulling of the end(s), the only thing it can do, is to make them shrink more, not to make them slide and rotate - not even a mm !
The future generations of honest knot tyers, who will not be as scientifically illiterate, as arrogant, as immersed in ego-trips, most of the times just pretending and showing up in front of an imaginary / non-existing audience, as WE are, will understand the mechanism. They will use laboratories, instruments, numbers and statistics, they will follow the centuries old and still/always young scientific method, they will create mental images and models of the mechanisms involved, and they will explain the phenomenon. Although the future is not ours to see, it will be, and since it will be, those things will happen, that is for sure.

[Ruby]

really tight. movable pulley?

seems easy.
first an overhand knot, then pull a loop, and finally lock in opposed bights.

seems not very easy. any quick and easy method?

[xarax]

@Ruby post:9

really tight. movable pulley?

Right from the first post where I had described what a “tight hitch” is, I had also emphasized that it is also a self-locking binder - in fact, I could nt find something fundamental that could serve to distinguish them, other than the mere presence of the hitched object, of course ( which, sometimes, by the “push” the surface of the object applies on the nub, it changes its geometry and enhances its nipping / gripping power, relatively to the power of the same nub used for the corresponding binder, and suspended in mid-air ). Now, a binder which utilizes a mechanical advantage can be considered as a rope-made, block-and-tackle simple machine, a system of “soft” pulleys , if you like. The Poldo tackle is another such system - but also all the “tight hitches” I had tied ( the TackleClamp hitch and the Locked Double Cow hitch included ) can serve such a purpose.

Actually, I first form the loose knot in-hand ( and in the middle of the line, because I always like to tie it as a TIB hitch, although it is not required ), then I insert it on the pole, and I tie the ( slipped ) overhand knot only at the very end. However, you may find an easier and quicker way - or a “simpler” one, because personally I feel obliged to follow “transparent” (= not “magical” ) tying methods, in which the average knot tyer can watch the gradual transformation of the shape of the knot easily, and even, if possible, tying methods in which the shape of the knot does not change much, from start to finish. This may make those tying method more easily understandable, but not necessarily easier or quicker !

[xarax]

In my language, the root of the word zygos = yoke is used in many other words, which are related to the original meaning.
I copy some of them, from the dictionary :

zygaria = scales, balance, weighting machine
zygi = weighting, weight, weight of the plumb-line, or the plumb-line itself
zygiazo (verb) = balance, poise, hover over
zygizo (verb) = weight, turn the scale, weigh up, take stock, sum up, gauge, size up, ponder.
zygisma = weighing
zygos = balance, scales, yoke ( and double harness, for husband and wife… )
zygoma = approach, coming together, drawing near.
zygomatic = zygomatic
zygono (verb) = bring/put/draw near, approach, come/go/get/draw near or close.

sin+zygia = conjugation, syzygy ( astron. )
sin+zygos = husband / wife
sin+zygikos = connubial
dia+zygion = divorce
hypo+zygion = beast of burden / draught, pack-animal

The two parts of this hitch, which are forcefully connected to each other, while they approach each other during pre-tensioning, seemed to me to justify this name.
In Germanic languages, like English, the etymology is the same. I copy, from Wikipedia :

The word “yoke” is believed to derive from Proto-Indo-European *yug?m (yoke), from verb *yeug- (join, unite). This root has descendants in almost all known Indo-European languages including German Joch, Latin iugum, Ancient Greek ζυγόν (zygon), Persian یوغ (yuğ), Sanskrit युग (yug?), Hittite 𒄿𒌑𒃷 (i?kan), Old Church Slavonic иго (igo), Lithuanian jungas, Old Irish cuing, Armenian լուծ (lu?), Romanian jug, etc. (all meaning “yoke”). The verb to subjugate derives from the Latin form.

Old English geoc “contrivance for fastening a pair of draft animals,” earlier geoht “pair of draft animals” (especially oxen), from Proto-Germanic *yukam (cognates: Old Saxon juk, Old Norse ok, Danish aag, Middle Dutch joc, Dutch juk, Old High German joh, German joch, Gothic juk “yoke”), from PIE root *yeug- “to join” (see jugular). Figurative sense of “heavy burden, oppression, servitude” was in Old English.
Old English geocian “to yoke, join together,” from yoke (n.). Related: Yoked; yoking.

[xarax]

I use the ( not very scientific ) method shown in the pictures to get an idea of how much the hitch will “close” ( = how much the two parts of the yoke, the two crossing points of the interlinked opposed Us, will approach each other ), under loading, by pulling the end against the pole at all times. Details : After the initial removal of the slack, I do not intervene on the hitch any more - I only keep loading the end. I mark the pole with parallel lines ( every 60 degrees - although, to get a greater accuracy, sometimes I use denser lines, every 30 degrees ). I weight the water I pour into the bucket(s) with a cuisine balance/scales. Finally, when I step on the eye of the overhand loop, I pay some attention to my own balance, because I do not know how acrobats do it : how they manage to fall into the bucket with the water, without being hurt…

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[xarax]

The hitch shown in the previous post, after its pre-tensioning with 100 kg.
We see that the hitch has “closed” when the two crossing point have been dragged by their umbilical cords and had reached two diametrically place points on the surface of the pole. Their optimum distance should be about 1 pole diameter, i.e., at about half of the distance they are now - so , at the initial setting of the hitch ( with this particular pole, rope and pre-tensioning weight ), one should had started from a configuration where the two parts of the yoke were at about half a pole diameter apart, and not in contact to each other. Of course, with lighter pre-tensioning weights/loads, this initial distance should be even bigger, because otherwise, under a lighter loading, the two parts will not be able to come as close to each other as we would had wished.
I had shown an initial stage of this hitch with the two parts “kissing” each other, just to simplify the mental image of the loose knot. In fact, I always start pulling the end of the Yoke hitch, where I had removed all slack, when the two parts of the yoke are already at about half pole diameter, or even more ( at 90 degrees ), and my knots, with similar ropes, poles and pre-tensioning loadings, do not close prematurely. It is a matter of experience : after some time, one becomes able to guess where his hitch will lock, and if, during the pre-tensioning, he understands that it will lock too early or too late, he can always stop, loosen the hitch, return to a more proper initial stage, and start again - because, as I had emphasized, if/when this hitch is closed and locked, it becomes rock solid, and untiable - then, there is no turn back !

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[xarax]

The “top”,“front”, “main” side of this hitch. We see the two umbilical cords, which could /better had half the length they have now - which means that the knot should had started to shrink, by the pulling of its end, from a more “loose” initial configuration of its segments.
As I said in a previous post, the distance between the two parts of the yoke before the start of the pulling, which was zero in the case of the shown knot, could had been one half pole diameter, or even 90 degrees.
[ All this tying and trying of the tight “Tackled hitches” ( not only those which I had presented in those two threads, of course, but also of dozens of others, which I thought they are less interesting …), was not without some cost for me : I now suffer from severe back pains, and so I can not continue ( although I wish it very much…) and “finish” this exploratory journey at this unchartered area of the KnotLand. I can not even tie and try other knots, for the attachment of the Tail End within the tip of the bight/U of the second wrap, some of which I have in mind… The interested reader may find a better solution than the slipped overhand knot I had used, which would retain the TIB-ness of the hitch, while it could be untiable more easily after hard loading. Notice that the “over”/“under” relation of the continuation of the Standing End and the bight/U of the first wrap does matter : this knot is not symmetric. In the one case it is topologically equivalent to the unknot, and in the other to the overhand knot - and this offers some flexibility in the choice of the knot between the Tail End and the tip of the second bight/U. ]
For the moment ( I hope…), that s all, folks !

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[xarax]

You should find something that leads to the “loose”(=not-yet-tensioned ) knot, before the start of the pulling of the end, shown in the pictures of Reply#1 and Reply#3, not to the “closed”, already pre-tensioned knot.

[xarax]

A rare early morning without ( much ) pain, which I would nt left unexploited, of course !
Trying to get rid of the annoying slipped overhand knot ( I do not like overhand knots - they are bad, ugly knots, and the slipped overhand knots are not much better or prettier… ), I thought that I could take advantage of the parallel segment of the “first”/“left” wrap which runs near the “left” leg of the bight on which we have to attach our Tail End : a simple 360 degrees loop formed on this segment, could offer an anchor point, which, combined with the 180 degrees half-loop at the tip of the bight, could possibly be utilized to attach the Tail End and finish the knot.
The most neat and secure implementation of this idea I had found is shown in the attached picture : a “bowline finish”, where the loop on the first wrap has been utilized as nipping loop of the bowline. Now, one may think, as I did while I was tying this knot and before I pre-tensioned it, that this solution would offer a not-permanent, un-tiable finish - because bowlines are easily un-tiable… Well, wrong thought : this bowline is not un-tiable, because neither its second leg of the bight can be unburied from its place under the tensioned wrap, and pulled out of the nipping loop, nor the nipping loop itself can be loosened… And we have also to kiss good bye to the TIB-ness of the knot. Nevertheless, I though that it is an interesting variation / solution of the requirement for this not-very-clever slipped overhand knot finish.

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[xarax]

This knot resembles a temple, where one side/part of it is made from marble ( the opposed bights at the crossing point of the “first”/“left” wrap, and the Standing End which passes through them : a perfect solution ), and the other is made from wood ( the slipped overhand knot attached on the tip of the bight of the “second”/“right” wrap : a so-so solution ). What can we do ? There are some half-pretty, or even some half-ugly knots that work - to say nothing from some totally ugly- and also dumb - knots, that work, too ! ( the Timber hitch…).
So. I have to live with this, I guess. This hitch is incredibly tight, to be abandoned on reasons of looks.
Trying to improve the situation, I tied the same Yoke hitch, but this time I did not pass the slipped Tail End of the overhand knot through the tip of the bight of the wrap - i.e., I did not tie an ABoK#1821-like solution, which is the most secure and natural solution in this case. I thought that one can possibly utilize the “classic” property of the snag hitches, to immobilize ( totally or partially ) the Tail End by passing it underneath a tensioned riding turn. The result is shown at the attached pictures.
It looks a somewhat prettier / less bulky solution. The interesting thing is that it seems to hold very well, although the Tail End is not nipped by the bight of the wrap, as in the solutions presented at the first post of this thread. To pre-tension the hitch, I had started pulling the Standing End, and from then on I had not intervened at the slipped overhand knot itself at all (*)- however, although during the pre-tensioning it became somewhat elongated, and “opened” up, it continued to grip the slipped Tail End very efficiently, because it squeezed it in between its own segments and the surface of the pole. And in this hitch, this squeeze, just as the tension of the wraps, is h u g e !
Provided that, in the initial set up of the hitch, the slipped Tail of the overhand knot is left long enough ( say. twice as long as it is in the pictures ), I believe the hitch will “lock” without any compromise of its security. However, one should try it well beyond the pre-tension which I was able to apply on the Standing End ( about 250 kg ) to confirm this.

(*) If, at some point during the pulling of the Standing End, one stops for a moment and takes the slack of the slipped overhand knot off, and “closes” it as much as he can, and then starts again the pulling, at the end the overhand knot will be much more compact, and it will not even give the impression it could possibly let its slipped Tail slip through. In the hitch shown at the attached pictures I had not offered any such “help” in its compactness/integrity during the pre-tensioning phase.

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[xarax]

The Blackwall hitch is a GREAT knot. ( It occupies one of the 12 places in my personal Pantheon of “old” knots, and I believe it will stay there, for ever). It may be considered as the pinnacle of what people call, without giving much thought on this, “half hitches” - a class of knots which includes quite different structures ( many of which are nothing but disguised nipping loops/turns ).
Of course, in this great era of great knot parroting ( and not-great knot parroting - the only thing that is always great is the parroting itself ), where most “knot users” WATCH pictures of knots, but they do not actually tie and try them, and they do not even imagine they could tie them differently, or modify them, this knot is almost unknown. The internet popular super-markets, which advertise / promote / sell knots, present it as a hitch tied on a hook, so most people, who have never used or even got close to a big hook ( like those used in construction work, for example ), believe that this is not a knot they will ever “use”. I had not seen any of those knot-sellers to mention that the part of the hook utilized by the hitch is no different from the part of a same-size ring, so the Blackwall hitch can be tied on/within a ring as well. And, of course, nobody mentions that it can also be tied within the tip of a tensioned bight - perhaps they believe that this could frighten the naive customers ! However, the Blackwall hitch within-a-bight, as I use to call it, is nothing but the incarnation of the “original” Blackwall hitch tied within the rope of the bight is less slippery than the “corresponding” hook or a ring, it may work even better.
Therefore, it is no surprize that the very first knot that crossed my mind when I was trying to figure out how to attach the Tail End of the Yoke hitch to the bight of its “second” wrap, was the Blackwall hitch within-a-bight. Less convoluted, less prone to jamming, consuming less material, requiring less tucks than the overhand knot-based solutions ( ABoK#1821), in short, a clever minimal knot, which should always be the first thing we try when we have to attach an end to the tip of a tensioned bight.
One can understand my surprize when, after the first, after the second, after the 12th try, the Blackwall hitch within-a-bight itself remained firmly attached where I had placed it - but the Yoke hitch as a whole, based on it, failed to work, even once ! By pulling the Standing End against the pole, all that one does is to force the transport of its entry point from the “rear” to the “front” side of the pole, without tensioning the wraps themselves at all. The two wraps and the pole rotate relatively to each other, but the tension one would had wished to be generated by this motion remains notoriously absent : the wraps do not start to shrink when they should had to, so they do not stop sliding on the surface of the pole, so they do not stop rotating, so their crossing points ( the two parts of the tackle ) do not stop approaching each other, until they finally close the gap, “kiss” each other, and the whole “tensioning” phase terminates - without any tension. This is exactly what one would had anticipated a “Tackled hitch” should behave, if he had only “watched” Tackled hitches, and had not actually tied properly and tried carefully a sufficient number of them, a sufficient number of times. In the attached picture, one can see the initial stage of the Yoke hitch with a Blackwall hitch within-a-bight finish : Not very different from the much less clever solution of the slipped overhand knot or the ABoK#1821 shown in previous posts - yet it seems that the less clever solutions work, and this more clever solution does not !
Why is this so ? Why this clever solution does not contribute ( someway, I do not know how ) in the early shrinking and the subsequent tightening of the wraps of the hitch during its transformation imposed by the pull of its Tail End against the pole, while the dumb solution based on the overhand knot does ( also somehow, I also do not know how ) ? ? ? I simply do not know…

[xarax]

Another simple finish for the Yoke hitch, which does not involve an overhand knot. If we pass the Tail under as many tensioned segments (= riding turns ) of the two wraps as it meets in its way, when it completes a 360 degrees O-turn, it is secured even more than we would had wished ! When you just look at those pictures, you will wonder if this finish ( where the Tail End is not interweaved to itself, like it happens in the ABoK#1821-like solutions ), would be adequate, under the extremely strong tensile forces it has to withstand - but, actually, if you tie and pretension the hitch, you will realize that there is only one way to pull this secured Tail out : to cut its last segment off. Each time I tie and pre-tension it ( as hard as I can, of course ), the rope becomes 15cm shorter…

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[xarax]

That is because you had not pulled the end with both your hands AND feet, like a rower or weight lifter - or you had not hanged the pole by the Standing End in its middle, and then stepped on it with your one foot at the one side of the hitch and the other at the other, like I do… If you do this, the best, more clever, less harming the spinal cord untying technique I was able to figure out, in the one involving the instrument shown in the attached picture.