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Relative knot strengths

JoshW

JoshW

Well-known member
Tldr: pretty much all knots are strong enough to hold any load you could put on it short of those that would make you piss and poop blood anyway if it did hold
 
Cantclimbtom

Cantclimbtom

Well-known member
I 90% agree with Josh, that rope snapping in the knot isn't a likely failure scenario unless many other things are already catastrophically wrong in which case the knot wasn't your problem. So the strength of common knots isn't often very relevant.

That all said.. I been wrong and surprised by counterintuitive stuff. For example joining two ropes by just trying a fig 8 in the two ends (not sure I'd have done that rather than a double fisherman's or a rethreaded 8?) is dangerous and can roll undone, whereas the scary looking overhand "European Death Knot" / "EDK" (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offset_overhand_bend) is far safer and much less likely to get snagged on rock when retrieving. Now I'd never have expected that

Or.. when using dyneema/spectra/etc materials for cords, a double fisherman's knot is absolutely unsafe (can slide and roll undone at amazingly low loads, like 1kn in some cases) whereas for a normal rope or cord it's an ideal choice

So a bit of education can be useful on knots (thanks MikeM) but I'm not earning some scout badge or something to be a knot nerd to memorise percentages, but sometimes there are unintuitive things and we can all benefit from learning
 
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