Page 20 - Peter Randall - The Craft of the Knot

What’s It Used For?

There are many other uses for stopper knots. They can make the end heavier to use
for throwing. Heaving knots are for weighting the end of a rope to assist with throwing

the rope. Often a smaller rope is thrown between a boat and the dock, and then used to
pull a heavier one over. The same technique is used in many circumstances to get a
heavy rope in a hard-to-reach place. In getting a rope over and between two particular

branches high in a tree, a rope can be thrown over all of them, and then another can be
thrown across it between the branches, from a different angle, 90 degrees if possible. In
this manner, the second rope will pull the first down between the two branches. Two
common knots for weighting the end of a line are the Heaving Line Knot and the
Monkey’s Fist.

Stopper knots can be used as mallets with a soft striking surface, or they can be

treated with shellac to harden them. They also use up line to make it shorter. Both the
Heaving Line Knot and the Monkey’s Fist have a number of turns that use up line.
Depending on how much shorter a cord needs to be, anything can be used from an
Overhand Knot to a long Heaving Line Knot or even a coil. They can prevent the end
from fraying, although whipping the end, as shown in Appendix A, is a neater solution.

Stopper knots are used for decoration, and a knot in the end of a cord can be used as a
reminder of something.

MULTISTRAND STOPPER KNOTS

Knot tyers long ago figured out that the strands of three-stranded rope can be unlayed
and then tied together to form simple or complex stopper knots. These knots are

characterized by simple and easy-to-remember patterns for tying, and their woven
appearance. On square-rigged sailing ships these knots were used to stop hands and feet
from sliding on ropes. They can also be tied by binding two or more separate cords
together. Multistrand knots are also used as a form of decorative knot tying. Some

knots, like the Matthew Walker Knot, can serve both decorative and functional
purposes.

Multistrand stopper knots can be made in many variations just by using the Wall and
Crown Knots (described later in this chapter). They can be combined in various orders
and can even be doubled to make a larger knot. To double them, retrace each strand
along a previous strand’s path. If a Wall and then a Crown is made, the ends can be

tucked down the center from the top and then cut off where they come out the bottom.
Then, when someone asks what you did with the ends, you can say that you “threw
them away.”

THE OVERHAND SERIES