plagiarise one of your images
"My" images, are not images of
me ( fortunately...
), neither are they images of "my" knots - so they belong to KnotLand, and to all members of this Forum, as I have said time and again. I laugh with people who believe that there are knots that "belong" to them, because they may be the first ones that had happened to tie them - so imagine what I do with people who believe that
the pictures of those knots belong to them !
...
What I find more interesting, than the examination of the stopper part-by-part, is its overall image - an image of many sharp, around-one-rope-diameter U-turns, the one after the other. Count them, to see how many they are, is such a relatively small volume. So, many U-turns - and some nipping structures too, of course. There can be no stopper, indeed, no practical knot, without enough nipping / constricting action. No practical knot can work as a loose knot, because all practical knots work by friction, and friction needs tightness - but that sounds like a tautology to my ears. On the contrary, the realization that we need sharp U-turns, "inner collars", lines turning the one around the other but not all around a central core, orbiting like
satellites, not like
planets, was not obvious to me...That is what I had attempted to do with the
Whaler s knot and stopper - following a previous very clever attempt by Dan Lehman, with his hooked and
blooded Fisherman s knot.
So, do not use your magnifying glasses here, just see the (tight) knot from a distance. The
pattern of many sharp U- turns, the one after the other, is obvious. However, the efficiency of this pattern is only
conjectured by me - I have not tested this knot and stopper on Dyneema and in the extremely high loads this material can withstand.
I consider this general pattern quite different (or, at least, distinct ) from the pattern of the double or triple overhand knot, or the
Strangle and the
Trefoil bends, in particular ( but also to the retraced knots, based on the fig.8, fig.9, etc stoppers ), which failed when they were tested on Dyneema. Therefore, I make a theoretical "cut", and divide the possible stoppers in two broad categories. I had NOT said that half of the stoppers utilize only the nipping / constricting bights mechanism, and the other half the many sharp U-turns mechanism, as you might had understood. ALL knots have nipping / constricting bights., and ALL knots have "outer" or "inner" collars, i.e., U -turns, almost by definition ! Without tightness, there can be no friction, so no practical knot, and without change in direction, the line of the first knot would still be travelling in a straight line to a distant galaxy. I had just tried to lighten the same, very complex thing a practical knot, in general, and a stopper, in particular, is, from two different light sources.
That was my point. When I started to look the general pattern of those stoppers, their image got imprinted in my mind, in a way... So. when, after a few days, I fell on the Eternity knot s image on the web, entirely by accident, I recognized the "similarity" of it with those stoppers immediately - and I had started to see it as a stopper, not as just another decorative knot. I had not proposed it as a replacement of the triple Fisherman s knot, but I just said it would be
interesting to tie and try it, along with the other "similar" many sharp U-turns stoppers, to see what happens.
The only "local" thing I paid attention when I was tying the
Whalers knot and stopper, was to place the last part of the Tail end, the last line of defence against slippage, directly under the Standing part s first curve. Therefore, I had avoided the, perhaps simpler, retucking of the Tail end through the central openings SS369 did with his
Double Torus stopper. However, I can not be sure which one of the two stoppers will be proved to be more efficient, by TESTS ( actually, the three stoppers, because there is yet another stopper which can be tied according the scheme of two opposing interpenetrating overhand knots ).
As I have been careful to point out, how will those stopper "fold" when they will be squeezed from one side ( from the surface on which they will lie, or from the other "half" in the case of a Fisherman s-like knot ), I just can not predict.
However, I agree that we first have to TEST those monster stoppers, because it is not the first time our predictions were wrong... Knots are more complex machines than we wish to believe they are.
If those stoppers are used as halves of Fisherman s like bends, they may behave differently, than if they are used as pure stoppers. KnotGod knows what will happen between four overhand knots in a row, squeezed upon each other by the huge forces a Dyneema line can withstand ! Only tests can tell if those stoppers will hold ( I hope they will...), and, if they do, which will break latter, in a higher percentage of MBS of the unknotted line, than the other.
I said that you may need your glasses, specifically in the part of my reply referring to your statement that the U-turns of the lines may act just like the lines going through pulleys, and they will ROTATE...
Simply adding turns without ensuring that the frictional forces fight one another instead of reinforcing one another is false assurance. There are ample demonstrations of knots with plenty of turns and bulk that will freely rotate and allow the cord to feed through almost as if they were nothing more than pulleys.
As you can se now, the lines in the Whaler s stopped will NOT rotate - for many reasons, one of which is that they the U-turns are
alternating and
balanced ( even if the U-turns of the one half of the knot tend to rotate towards the one direction, the U-turns of the other half counter balance this tendency ).
My first impression of this 'stopper' was that it was going to be yet another pretty little construction devoid of functionality, especially as the author Nico-matelotage seems to have published it simply as proof that a knot does not have to be complicated to be pretty.
I do not care why a person presents a knot, neither what he believes about it - I examine the knot itself. This "decorative" knot CAN be functional, and CAN serve as a stopper - and I believe that many other "decorative" knots cam, and they deserve to be examined, and not just dismissed beforehand, without any testing. Therefore, do not bother to read what Nico-whatever or I say - just tie and try the knots, and tell us what do you think about
them !