The Clove hitch is able to present some noticeable resistance to its "unwinding" by the pull of one of its ends perpendicularly to the surface of the pole. This happens because the pulled end stems out of the tip of the V of the two crossed segments ( the riding turn and the free end ), so it "feels" friction from both sides.
However, this resistance is still very weak. The curiosity of the knot tyer pops out, and makes him ask : How can we improve this ? How can we improve the Clove hitch, and possibly do to it the same thing we did to the Cow hitch : "lock" it ?
When one arrives at this point - that is, when one happens to ask the right question -, the answer becomes obvious. To retain the TIB-ness of the Clove hitch, there can be few, only, simple retuckings which "lock" it, and the one which works better than the others is shown at the second attached picture.
Only after I had tied this hitch, and I had seen its similarity ( which I should had anticipated, but I hadnt... ) with the EEL Locked Cow hitch ( shown in the third attached picture, and in (1)), I remembered another case where we had two very similar tight hitches, the one Clove-like and the other Cow-like, and we could not decide which was better : the Alaskan hitch and the Locked Cow hitch (B). At the end, I had to abandon the ingenious Alaskan hitch because it is not either-end-loadable ( EEL )(2). In the present case, both similarly "locked" hitches, the Locked Clove hitch and the Locked Cow hitch, are EEL, so the decision would not be so easy, I am afraid... (*)
1.
http://igkt.net/sm/index.php?topic=5250.msg34820#msg34820 http://igkt.net/sm/index.php?topic=5250.msg34825#msg34825 http://igkt.net/sm/index.php?topic=5250.msg34850#msg34850 2.
http://igkt.net/sm/index.php?topic=4739.msg34906#msg34906 P.S.1 There is a case where Ashley tries to secure a Clove hitch, by finishing it with a half hitch around the Standing End : ABoK#1805 is a "not bad" hitch, but it is not TIB. Also I had seen that and, when tied on slippery ropes, it should better be secured by two half hitches, not only one.
P.S.2 Initially, I had started from a Clove X hitch ( X=crossed tails ), which sometimes becomes tighter than the common Clove hitch (but it is not TIB : it is topologically equivalent to the overhand knot ). So I had tied a Clove X-based "locked" hitch, which, due to its re-tucking, became TIB. However, at the end I saw that, regarding tightness, there was no noticeable difference between a locked Clove X hitch and a locked Clove hitch, and I had decided to show only the later, simpler knot.
P.S.3 By now I had tried this hitch on a number of different ropes, and I can tell with certainty about its locking mechanism that, although it is identical to the locking mechanism of the Locked Cow hitch, in this case it does not "work" so efficiently : it can become equally tight, but it can be loosened and release its tight grip on the two ends more easily, especially after a pull of the Tail end ( which pull forces the nub to rotate a little bit, and so it destabilizes and loosens it ). Therefore, my decision was not so difficult after all
: the Locked Cow hitch remains my favourite Cow-based two-wrap hitch, and the Bull Clove hitch my favourite Clove-based one.
