Hey it's most definatly not something to feel stupid about,...
I'd agree wholeheartedly with that.
Ogri has hit the nail square on the head with the above advice!
As a boy going to sea, I was given a thorough grounding in rope-work. It was neither easy nor the dawdle it sounds, when you consider that the tutors were all retired Skippers, some of whom had gone to sea at a frighteningly early age. You can imaging they weren't the easiest of men to please.
Whenever I think of Cap'n Reggie Lines, I remember trying to get to grips with splicing wire, my trembling soft, pink fingers scraped, bruised and bleeding. And then there were his navigation and math classes :yikes: It was fear of Reggie Lines that produced results no high school math teacher ever managed to get.
The words "Don't you cross my bows, lad!" come to mind.
The library contained the tome, "Blackwell's Knots, Bends, Hitches, Whippings and Splices" which I longed to get my hands on. Alas, it was a revered 1st Edition and we were only allowed to view it under supervision... and definitely not allowed to touch. I'd love to get my hands on it now!
Usage of ropes has come from a working environment to a leisure environment and in the transition many of the names have almost been lost. Organisations from Scout Groups to climbing and sailing clubs have taught knots and very often traditional names have gone by the wayside. The internet now brings names from many different languages and cultures into our living rooms. I've seen the same knot repeated under different names in the same book!
An American I worked with told me the Bowline was a good old Texas Cattleman's knot.
I said I thought a cow had horns, which didn't amuse him. But that shows where a concept can change in a culture with different needs. The same Texan taught me a knot he called a Bridle-hitch, for securing a horse to a post. It's the same knot I've heard referred to as a the Siberian Hitch, a name I can only imagine coming into English through Bushcraft and would be surprised if named as such in Siberia.
Usage also changes in the absence of old wisdom, I was taught the Sheep-shank but was also told that it was an unreliable knot, unsafe for use under tension. It's usage was mainly for applying tension to prevent things from moving rather than for tensioning down a load on a truck. Consequently, it's a knot I rarely use, as it isn't easy to deploy in a confined space like a canoe and there are safer knots to use on roof-racks!
You might say that the name doesn't matter, but in a lot of cases the old name actually tells you something about the knot, it's construction or how it behaves, which is probably part of transferring wisdom. It does matter to me, as I see this knowledge as something that has come down to us through our entire maritime history, although I was thrilled to see a post with a natural fibre rope tied in a clove hitch from a Neolithic house found at Federsee in Germany, proving a long and very respectable relationship between man and rope!
Unfortunately, that tradition is being broken in a far more terminal way today, the use of knots and splices being frowned upon as HSE rules and regulations widen and are applied more stringently.
There was a time not so long ago when working men used to regularly compete and play puzzle games with rope and twine. They used to say that 2 Riggers with a bit string could entertain each other for hours on end, but you'd have to look a bit harder these days to find a Rigger under 40 years of age who can tie a decent knot.
Knots... love em!
