Very cool principle! One question: I've been playing with some small stuff here for about 5 minutes, and I am failing to see how a bowline can invert. I tried it with the tail inside the loop and out, and unless the tail was loaded, and the knot very loose (read: not dressed), it wouldn't do anything but tighten the knot. I is confuzzed!
PF
It's better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.
Formerly known as Acercanto, my trail name is MacGuyver to some, and Pucker Factor to others.
It's not procrastinating, its proactively delaying the implementation of the energy-intensive phase of the project until the enthusiasm factor is at its maximum effectiveness. - Randy Glasbergen
There is one circumstance where I have seen them fall apart, and one where Mors said that he has seen them invert.Originally Posted by PuckerFactor
When a bowline is tied underneath a lobster buoy, such that rising and falling of the waves makes the knot tighten, then go slack, over and over... that will result in the knot falling apart. The first step in falling apart is to invert.
Mors said that if a bowline is tied in a loop around a horse neck, and the animal freaks out, it will yank and yank on the line until the bowline inverts. It then becomes a slip knot, and chokes the horse.
I believe it is a steady, heavy load that will make a bowline become a knife knot. OTOH, it is a yanking load that will cause it to invert. I suspect that it is the slackening of the knot that allows it to invert.
As for how to demonstrate the inversion of a bowline, I have no advice.
- MacEntyre
- MacEntyre
"We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately." - Ben Franklin
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From someone much more knot-savvy than I: "If you happen to snag [a bowline] so that the tail and the right leg of the loop are yanked hard in opposite directions, the structures may not be stable enough to resist deformation. The bight can straighten out and disappear and the hitch that circles the bight can be transformed into a slip knot. If the knot is deformed in this way, the hitch will no longer have either squeezing power or anything to squeeze against. It will not be able to create enough friction to hold the knot together and can be easily stripped off." ---chockstone forum.org
"Pips"
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In quiet covers, cool and gray.
---Leigh Buckner Hanes
Surely, God could have made a better way to sleep.
Surely, God never did.
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