Page 111 - The Ashley Book of Knots

THE ASHLEY BOOK OF KNOTS

Remove the knot from the hand, tum it completely over, and

allow the two ends to hang down between the two middle fingers

of the left hand as drawn in the fifth diagram. Work out the surplus

material of the loop without distorting the knot and arrange it to co-

incide with the large diagram of KNOT '# 600.

In making KNOT '#602 by the KNIFE LANYARD method, the final

tuck is rove differently, as shown in the diagram.

There is a certain knack to be acquired in working these knots,

but with a little perseverance there should be no real difficulty. My

daughter Phoebe, at the age of six, without assistance, made a set of

four of these buttons for my painting coat, and after four years I

am still wearing them.

There are several other well-known knots that are occasionally

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600 employed as buttons, among them the MONKEY'S FIST ('# 542) and

the smaller TURK'S-HEADS of Chapter 17. The latter, tied in leather

over molds, are commonly found on sport coats.

There is a close resemblance in diagram form between the THREE-

LEAD, FOUR-BIGHT TURK'S-HEAD and the CHINESE BUTTON. This re-

semblance is particularly evident in '# 60 I.

I found that by altering the lines of two opposite sides of the

center or end compartment, so that they cross each other at the

center, any FOUR-BIGHT TURK'S-HEAD dia ram can be utilized for

tying a BUTTON KNOT. With slight modi cation the THREE-BIGHT

TURK'S-HEADS can also be adapted. But a FIVE-BIGHT TURK'S-HEAD

is too large and a Two-BIGHT TURK'S-HEAD too small at the center

to be wholly practical.

TURK'S-HEADS of more than five leads are too wide to make satis-

factory pellet-shaped knots, but they lend themselves to vertical

"cattail" forms.

Some of the first BUTTON, as well as the first MONKEY'S FIST, dia-

grams to be experimented with were drawn with soft lead pencil

on tennis balls, but the method was unhandy. I tried projecting them

on a slate, with three- and four-sided planes, and the method proved

more practical.

Eventually I found that any symmetrical design that was made

with a single line that crossed itself but once at any point, forming

planes of three and four sides only, and that had a crossing at the

center, was a potential diagram for a BUTTON KNOT. Not all such

diagrams, however, produced successful knots.

After a promising diagram had once been secured it often hap-

pened that it could be molded into two or even several different

forms. That is, the final shapes, except in a few cases, were not

necessarily inevitable. Certain forms that were searched for proved

elusive, while other forms were easily found and frequently were

duplicated, sometimes by quite different diagrams.

To assist in tying knots of a single strand that have a regular over-

one-and-under-one weave, I have used a system that is not difficult

60' to work and if followed methodically will tie the most complicated

knot. This has already been referred to in Chapter I. The single line

of such a knot has an arrowhead at one end and a feather at the

other to indicate the direction in which the cord is to be laid. After

an enlarged working copy of the diagram has been made, the cord

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