Grog’s Animated Guide to Knots

Gro;g’s animated knots page shows you how to tie several dozen knots with simple, step-by-step animations. Knots are lovely things, making rope into something useful and potential if unlikely lifesavers. I pretty much hated most of the basic skills of Boy Scouts, but for some reason the knot tying part still gets me. (Although I can tie fairly complicated knots, I rarely can remember the most basic ones and when to use them. I guess learning them in a practical setting would be best.)

A friend’s boyfriend helped me load some lumber on the top of my old Chevy Blazer once. He jumped on top, whipped a length of rope around a couple of times and tied off the whole thing with a self-tightening loop rig that could be loosened by pulling another loop when I was ready to unload. That whole rig held for 2,000 miles until my truck died in Utah. I asked him where he learned to tie knots like that and he said his dad used to be a piano mover. Turns out the son of a piano mover is just as likely to learn how to move pianos than to learn how to play them.

Do any of you guys use knots in your work? I’m slightly sad to say I only use them occasionally to tie up a loop of CAT-5.

Animated Knots List [AnimatedKnots.com] (Thanks, Brett!)