Just finally sprung for ABOK, found a deal at Walmart.com that i listed on site, for years Cyrus Day's "The Art of Knotting and Splicing" by the Navy institute press, plus some climber's usualties, Brion Toss; sopme of the names are different.
Day is pretty good. OTOH, another old book w/loads of "knots" often cited,
Encyclopedia of Knots & Fancy Ropework is incredibly lousy
--unless one likes looking at lots of decorative stuff.
Stevedore for sure(gonna redo that section, and prolly all of it fro one reason or another); i do have oysterman, thaought that was going a lilfar, but it is probably properly illustrative and complete...
In stoppers one had various needs: simplicity, ability to be drawn up
snug against surface, bulk, assured staying tied, ease of UNtying.
If you're tying off the end of some whipping or seizing, e.g.,
the Overhand stopper is easiest to set tight against whatever: one can
get it pretty snug against the surface by tying, and then using some
thin/needle/forcep pliers forked on either side of the end,
and another thin-nosed pliers to nip and turn-tighten that end,
set the knot both more snug and of course ???? tight.
--probably the hardest knot to untie is a jammed Overhand: there is just
so little material to get any purchase into, any give from!
A Fig.8 in such an up-snug-against application doesn't cut it.
The Ashley's Stopper (prefer this to "Oysterman", as that name though
given by the knot's *inventer*, is wrong in implication) can be tied
easily and pretty tightly, hauling hard to set the Overhand component
before drawing down the SPart to nip the end. There are some other
stoppers that work pretty well to stay tied.
Have to look up that quo hitch dealy for sure!
Oh, that was a "qua" as in "as": the Constrictor is best as a
binder
--both ends untensioned--; qua hitch, it gets distorted (indeed, it's one way
to loosen it for untying).
Now, my recall was wrong: #1674 (#1244) is the knot I described.
(#1688 is a too poorly known hook hitch, formable in the bight
--which Ashley didn't mention.)
Breaking before the bend is what i always see
Hmmm, in 3-strand laid rope breaks that I've seen the results of,
it appears that the strand that breaks (it is usually one, sometimes
two, strands that break on a slow-pull, and then the loading
is stopped) is the one under greatest COMPRESSION at the point
of rupture. It isn't those on the outside of the bend, as is often conjectured.
(I'd sure like to see some good work done to really address this
question!) Breaking away from the bend seems to question how variance
in the bend can affect strength (why one knot is stronger than another,
or stronger in one rope than another).
Btw, a good thing to picture in your shots of various knots re strength
is LOADED knots--you likely can get some decent shots of the knots holding
a sizeable chunk o'wood, and it's THERE that things matter (what appears
bent after tying can change a lot with the load). Oh, and that Clove H.
around the trailor hitch wrongly brings the loaded part high on the ball,
gaining dangerous leverage.
--knudenoggin
