Goodness, Grandmother, what long tails you have!!!
Kinda blows the claim of confidence in the chosen knot,
doesn't it --just as it did for the original (unadorned "EDK") :
"Oh, perfectly dandy,
just have a furlong of tail and good life insurance!"
This is the 2nd most stupid thing you've said on this forum. You know the 1st.
Makes me wonder what the 1st most stupid thing DL has said on this forum is
Indeed, you're not alone (but if it's as "stupid" as this,
there must be lots!
).
I can see DL's point, both long tails and a locking overhand seem a bit of a "belt and suspenders" approach to improving security of the EDK. Isn't the point of the added overhead to prevent the body of the knot rolling down the tails in overload or shock loading? If it's doing it's designed job, why do you still need the long tails?
Exactly! In a sense, one
does have long tails,
it's just that they are engaged into the knot --well,
the material is, and thus is no longer "tail".
.:. Rather than having lots of (mere) material, I say,
DO something with it! And we can do things that
obviate the need for such dubious safety (i.e., if they
are to take up "rolling"/"flyping", whose to say that
such action doesn't just repeat-until-tails-run-out?!
(Tom Moyer's testing has some cases where one could
wonder, with the
offset fig.8, IIRC --the 8 distinguishing
itself by consuming much material per flype vs.
overhand.)
On the other hand, one uses the EDK because there is no other knot that rides over an edge as well. So when using it, you're accepting the drawbacks of lower strength and security in favor of the positive (and necessary) feature of easy rope retrieval.
Here we should reject "lower strength" : it is
equallystrong --won't break-- under the target circumstances.
Now, stability & security, well, that's our focus for improvements,
and I think we have various solutions (of which the
offset
fig.9-Oh is perhaps the most effective-efficient and the
EDK-backed-up-EDK the most error-proof (resisting
three errors : wrong orientation of mis-matched ropes per
thick/thin; poor dressing-&-setting; and spacing between
the main & back-up/"safety" knots. (I.e., I think that even
badly oriented, loosely/carelessly set, and spaced-apart knots
might still come to hold (the first roll might do much for the
main knot's initial looseness!) --but I've never tested this
conjecture.)
Btw, I was not a fan of the latter knot at first
--as it lacked the cleverness of more efficient ones--,
but I come to realize that error-proofness of it
and simplicity to learn & tie are significant pluses
(where the knot tyers are not experts and might be
under duress of poor & worsening conditions).
Mobius, perhaps you could run that EDK again with
both a snugged-close-to-it back-up and a spaced-apart
one, and see how they fare in such hard-to-hold cord
that has so far defeated the knot quickly!?
(We should be prepared to view w/some doubt results
that seem okay --rolling onto back-up and then ...
holding-- as possibly lucky ones, with rolling ... being
something maybe of such potential variety that one
success might not indicate any surety of success!)
--dl*
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