A CAD - made image you can rotate and look at the virtual object from different sides, like the one presented in this thread, is fine, but pictures of the real thing are even more fine - and the real thing is the super-duper finest of them all !
I had realized that there are 3 1/2 years since I had posted my first picture of the opposed bights locking mechanism (1), applied in the case of a
Trucker s hitch. So, have a look at 4 more recent pictures, taken from different sides. They are not as clear as I had wished ( to take really clear pictures of knots, one has to use even a cheap 6 x 6 medium format
film camera, with a not-zoom, prime pancake lens, and then digitize the picture using even a cheap scanner !
), but they are better than the ones shown previously and elsewhere...
I do not know if Ashley himself had understood clearly the idea behind this mechanism shown in ABoK#1524, I am pretty sure that the author of the
Versatackle hitch had not ( most probably, like his readers, he was under the ( false ) impression that the efficiency of this mechanism was due to the many wraps, and the friction in between the segments of the many interlinked U s ), but now there is no excuse for anybody not to have the abstract picture of it in his / her mind - and use it when it is required. It is the best mechanism which "
captures the progress" of the pre-tensioning of an end of a knot we have. ( I had used it in the
TackleClamp hitch, for example )
The beauty of this mechanism lies not only in the way it "locks", but also in the way it "unlocks', and releases the Tail End, at an instant. This can be understood
only in the case of the "pure", "elementary" configuration, with only two opposed bights and the Tail End immobilized in between them, as shown in this thread. One has only to "untuck" the Tail End through the bight of its link, and pull it slightly "sideways", without pulling it lengthwise at all, so its L-shaped curvilinear part / "handle" which was previously located in between the tips of the two bights, now gets out of their squeezing = gripping touch : the hitch is released at a glance.
1.
http://igkt.net/sm/index.php?topic=1870.msg17364#msg17364