Brian C wrote:My understanding is limited, but to me the main point of using simple knots is that it makes it easy for both you and your partner to double check that the knot is tied correctly. Bowline accidents are pretty common even though it is a safe knot, simply because it is harder to tie correctly and less people know it so double checking is harder. Your knot looks cool but it seems like it would fall into that camp. If you showed it to me to double check I would have to trust you that it's tied correctly because I don't know it. EDK is so easy to tie, check and everybody knows it. Long tails are a must and tying two EDKs back to back will also help.
Before the EDK became popular, double fisherman’s knot was the tried and trusted knot for joining two ropes, the Flemish bend was a distant second. The EDK is certainly simpler to tie, but I think the raise in its popularity was mainly due to the fact that it has a “flat” side. When pulling the rope, the knot tend to roll away from the rock, leaving the flat side to glide over any edges or lips, so it’s easier to pull. That was the main reason I switched from the double fisherman to the EDK anyway.
You certainly have a valid point that a simpler knot is easier to check, but I’m not sure if that’s a good enough reason to use a knot that has the inherent ability to roll. EDK is the only knot we climbers use that has its own disclaimer: the EDK is great! As long as you leave a foot long tail, and always pull all four strands to dress it, and only use it for bodyweight applications, and be careful with wet rope, or new rope, or really slick rope… You’re also right that by tying a second overhand in the tail you can eliminate the risk of rolling, maybe we should all do this if we use the EDK, but I have never seen anyone do it in real life. I’ve used the EDK for years, but I was never comfortable with the fact that I’m placing all my faith in a knot that I don’t even trust to hold my shoe laces (coincidentally I use the double overhand to tie my shoe laces, which is much less likely to come undone than a simple overhand).
The knot I posted above is a double overhand, basically an overhand with an extra wrap. It is the knot many climbers use to “backup” the re-threaded figure eight, so it’s not really a new knot, but one that most of us already know and use. It is not that much more complicated to tie and check than a simple overhand. There may be a few different ways to tie the double overhand, but they all end up the same knot. Comparing to a bowline, I know four different variations of it for tying in, and that’s not counting the various finishes and with the tail on the inside or on the outside of the loop. So bowline is a much more complicated knot to tie and inspect. Even with all its downfalls, I still use the bowline when I project something I’m expected to fall many times (I use a particular bowline that I think is much safer than the other variations). But to say the bowline is more accident prone, I’d like to see some numbers and sources.
In the end though, I agree that some people don’t like (or have a hard time) learning a bunch of different knots, so maybe the EDK is the best knot for them to keep it simple. I personally like to delve into the minute technical aspect of things, and I have a bunch knots filed away in my head, that’s why I like to think about those.
GregMiller wrote:Links to published articles? (Yeah I'm feeling lazy).
The person who said it has been tested, hasn't posted the article yet.
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