I was content to leave the Search for the Holy Grail (of rockclimbing tie-in eyeknots)
to the Bowline family (and of this, to the pure "Bowline" sub-class, excluding what I
call the "Anti-Bowline" subclass of "Bowlines": where the tail reenters the knot from
the opposite side of the **quintessential/definining qua "bowline"** nipping loop).
But here you're stepping outside of that. And this knot doesn't deserve, on structural basis,
the name "bowline"--nevermind what gift of nonsense Hansel & Gretel gave to us. Firstly,
there is no nipping loop, really, but a Crossing Knot (above, with an extra turn); secondly,
the end reenters the nub from the side opposite to that that the SPart lies on in crossing
itself (Derek's GeeSpot).
Scott McCrea calls it "bowline-on-a-bight with a twist." and that is a very apt description,
because the twist is the key to ridding the bowline of the 'G' Spot.
?? Nonsense on the long-winded quite wrong-headed moniker: a BoaB is (1) made "on a B."
and (2) has twin eyes--now, do you see how apt this is? Not at all. And "apt because ..." is
a non sequitur IMO: let's think about what the essence of a Bowline is, twisted or unharmed.
> The GeeSpot is gone.
It was much a myth in significance re the Bowline. But, no, so far as I see it, there is such
an offending crossing point writ large in this knot, where the SPart's flow into the eye crosses
(u-turns) around the SPart, which bears over it. Here, too, under load the SPart can change
the incline of this plane of crossing such that it bears ever less severely against the other part.
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The version presented above by Derek is a dressing and a turn different from what I presented
as the "Locktight I", a knot whose discovery came with the new millennium (Y2K, 2000 --and I like
my New M. to start here, not 2001, thank you all the same). To get here from there, you simply
move the eye-end of the SPart coil up (as D. presents it, eye-down) around it, so that the SPart
now reaches all the way to the lower/eye side, and then wraps back up around itself, and then
makes the hard-turn exit en face de collar--very
Strangle -like, eh!? yes, the point.
I've fiddled some versions of this, which all extend H&G's so-called "Twist Bowline" by having one
or more *overwraps*, like a Strangle (and for the same effect--slack security). They seem to work
airly well, with the back-door secret for loosening to untie being the collar'd end & hard bend of the
SPart-side eye leg--which is bent so sharply that some loosening through the collar nevertheless
doesn't really enable this end of the coil to feed back into and loosen it, as the material just doesn't
flow around the hard turn.
My image of it used to reside on Dan Britton's
Knot Knowledge site, which is now gone.
The Locktight seemed to have what D. would luv to call a GeeSpot issue: after hard loading
(by me via pulley, e.g.), there was a pronounced point of compression in the SPart at its turn
into the overwraps. But this I think can be ameliorated by careful positioning of the end, in
anticipation of the heavy SPart draw, using a Cowboy collaring, and maybe with some mild
twist of SPart and re-entering tail --though this introduces complexity beyond what
most users can be expected to master (and maybe excessive material constraints).
No, no, no: NOT any "Munter Bowline". We really shouldn't be corrupting "bowline" as a
concept into meaning what it has occasionally historically seemed to mean, simply "eye knot".
It's bad enough that others have grabbed onto "bowline" apparently as a means to credibility.
Let's try to figure out that "bowlines" should share an essential component, what that is,
and excise things from the set that lack this. I exclude the Crossing-knot (Munter) base
because the eye-side doesn't pull directly into the essential loop (1 or more turns).
(There is Ashley's "Carrick Loop" (#1033) as a problematic case: it's quite *bowline* unless
the tail is pulled tight to collapse the eye-side exit back around the SPart into Crossing-knot
form--where to delimit the two cases here!?)
--dl*
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