Page 23 - Peter Randall "The Craft of the Knot.."

of many cords as if all one cord, it provides a way to keep them
gathered.

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.