What Knot Is The Most Useful? Which Is The Strongest?

I love square knot with two half hitches. It's not pretty. not fancy. not a great demonstration of skills and diverse knowledge. But it will hold stuff together like nobody's business.

 

There's a knot for every purpose. For tying two ends together, it's the Zeppelin Bend every time for me. One must know the Bowline, Taut - Line Hitch, Canadian Jam. These three knots are most useful in survival and camping. There are other great knots to know as well, but these will handle most tasks.

Keep at least three hundred feet of type II paracord in your bug-out bag. It's cheap, super-strong, and lightweight. Plus, the inside strands can be removed and taken apart to be used from everything to dental floss to kite string. Use your imagination.

I tie some of these handy-dandy lanyards together, utilizing the snake knot, with the two ends tied together with the mighty Zeppelin Bend. These units are thirty five feet in length and can be linked together for use as just about anything you can think of, or they can be taken apart for even more creative uses. Type II paracord is good stuff! Keep tons of it around.

 

There are websites that you can learn knots from. A good not can be untied. I don't remember all the names. Would need to look them up. After you tie enough knots. You will begin to see things in common about them.

I have paracord as well. I also have 2 large anchor ropes I stored back. They are each 150 foot I think 2 are 1/2 inch and the other is maybe a 5/8". I got them from 2 old sale boats my brother scrapped. I kept anchors too. Windage type. with 10 feet of chain on them.

I absolutely hate to cute a rope! I am even anal about it.

I hope to by a Bush Winch this next year.

 

(I did post this on another tread)
For anyone who want to learn knots I recommend
http://www.animatedknots.com/
In case anyone wants to know when u tie two separate ropes or string together it not called a knot but a bend

 

I love knots but I think that the one that has been most useful for me is the Trucker's Hitch. I use it to tie down loads, set the tension on guy lines and even use it like a Sheepshank to shorten a line. My FAVORITE knot though is a Palomor because that is my go to fishing knot.

 

Let me first-up provide a link to a video showing some decent knots for hauling a load in a pickup truck. I do not use the knots this fellow uses (he likes half-hitches, I go a bit stronger), however this fellow has done a very good job of showing practical and safe knot-tying for everyday use:



My dad hauled some seriously heavy objects in his pickup truck. He used rope that would stretch least, like manila (w/water-proofing, the rope stank and was a bit sticky, we're talking over a half-century ago).

The knots for this could NOT be allowed to slip -- bad enough the rope's wee bit of stretching.

So, I'm gonna throw a rope over a load in the back of a truck. At the origin, one will pick some form of hitching knot. For this, pick your poison. Lord knows how many types of hitching knots have been dreamed up; if you search the web for images of hitch knots, you'll get dozens and of all configurations.

So you have your rope's origin tied down on one side of a truck's bed. Throw the rope over the load (we're keeping this simple, no unique objects, a load of lumber is handled differently). On the other side of the bed, your truck has some sort of loop or rail through or around which a rope can be passed. On this other side, tie a bowline knot (link below) between where the rope crosses the load and the truck's rail; put the knot closer to the load touch-area than to the rail so that you will have a working area for the remaining part of this tie-down process. I like the bowline knot's loop integrity better than other loop knot types. Seems I can untie that knot easier than others, even given that the knot isn't slippery.

https://www.eaa.org/~/media/images/airventure/flyingin/tiedowns/image3.gif

I use a metal carabiner through the bowline knot's loop so that I can click a rope through the carabiner as opposed to pulling the length of rope through the rope loop. Plus, carabiners being steel, are slippery and act as a semi-decent pulley.

OK, so now we are past the load to be secured. With the extra rope beyond the bowline knot, pass this around the truck rail and come back up to the loop with what is left of the rope. Pass this rope through the loop or click inside the heavy carabiner hooked to the loop. With rope in hand, notice that you have formed a pulley. Pulling on this rope now tightens the entire length. Release any snag points. The last part of securing this assembly is tying-off what is left of the rope. Refer to the video I included if you are in any way confused by my description. I use a procedure much like the other fellow, save that I use different knot types.

For tie-off, I use a slippery-knot loop. Now that I've passed a section of rope through the bowline loop, I use my left hand to keep tension on the rope and use my stronger right to grab the extra rope between my left hand and the knot. I pull past the rope section leading to the truck rail. In so doing, I've created an eye of passage for the remaining rope. If I put the rope through here, we would be finished, however I will have created a permanent knot. So what I do is put a bend of rope through, creating a slippery knot so that I can just pull on the distal end of the rope to undo the rope's tension and free the entirety of the rope assembly. I use the first loop's loop and make a second slippery loop out of that. Why? So that this REALLY will not slip. Two slippery knots do not preclude me from pulling the distal end of the rope to make the entire assembly come loose = zero knot untying to free the load. I have been unable to find a video of someone using my procedure. I'm lazy, so when arriving at a destination, I do NOT want to mess with knots. I want to pull the end of a rope and have the whole assembly come undone.

https://media1.britannica.com/eb-media/28/63128-004-FC45186E.gif

Side notes:

Oftentimes I keep a bowline knot about 1/3 way into rope lengths I keep in my SUV. Almost always I have a bowline at one end of a rope to provide a loop origin for a tie-down. I just leave my bowline knots for use in future -- freakily, the knots' locations are correct for the next application, go figure.

Always keep varying sizes of strong carabiners and use the largest/strongest that fits each job. Under heavy load, a carabiner can be destroyed, therefore I also keep some heavy steel hooks with a large eye hole. For rope, get rounded hook. For chains, use narrow hook that fits chain link thickness -- thus the hook also becomes a lock-down point along a chain length.

For rope:
https://media.tractorsupply.com/is/image/TractorSupplyCompany/3585091?$300$

For chain:
https://media.tractorsupply.com/is/image/TractorSupplyCompany/3585059?$300$
See how a chain link could be slid down sideways into that hook's slot? The link can't slip due to the links on either side of it being perpendicular to the narrow path.

 

I found a couple of videos about knots that may be more appealing to readers:

Load tie-downs:





The alpine butterfly knot can be tied without using the tip of the far end of the rope as a pass-through. The alpine butterfly allows you a quicky-way of tying, which is great. Me, I like another knot, and you sure don't have to have my preferences.


Constrictor knot


Arrowhead hitch

 

But when you need to fell a tree in specific direction and you know adjacent limbs may just hang it ...
When you wish to jerry-rig tarps when camping ...
When you need to hold huge posts true verticle in place until the concrete sets ...