While some people can look at diagrams or photos and tie the illustrated knots, others learn best by watching how a knot is tied.

Determining a precise value for a particular knot is difficult because many factors can affect a knot efficiency test: the type of fiber, the style of rope, the size of rope, whether it is wet or dry, how the knot is dressed before loading, how rapidly it is loaded, whether the knot is repeatedly loaded, and so on.

This behavior can worsen when the knot is repeatedly strained and let slack, dragged over rough terrain, or repeatedly struck against hard objects such as a masts and flagpoles.

This can be mitigated by leaving plenty of rope at the working end outside of the knot, and by dressing the knot cleanly and tightening it as much as possible before loading.

Sometimes, the use of a stopper knot or, even better, a backup knot can prevent the working end from passing through the knot ; but if a knot is observed to slip, it is generally preferable to use a more secure knot.

In knots that are meant to grip other objects, failure can be defined as the knot moving relative to the gripped object.

Sometimes this problem can be corrected by working-up the knot tighter before subjecting it to load, but usually the problem requires either a knot with more wraps or a rope of different diameter or material.

Any knot can be uniquely expressed as a connected sum of prime knots.

This is dangerous because the granny knot can slip when heavily loaded.

A tightened granny knot can also jam and is often more difficult to untie than the reef knot.

It can also be used to isolate a worn section of rope, where the knot is tied such that the worn section is isolated in the loop ( which of course does not receive a carabiner nor bear any loads in this case ).

Errors in tying the butterfly loop can produce a similar looking but inferior knot, the so-called " false butterfly ", which is prone to slipping.

* Improper tying can result in similar looking but inferior " false butterfly " knot

Simple and secure, it is a harsh knot that can be difficult or impossible to untie once tightened.

If a stronger and even more secure knot is required an extra riding turn can be added to the basic knot to form a double constrictor knot.

Nosebleed could be stopped by wrapping a red woolen string about the patient's neck and tying it in a knot for each year of his life.

For example, in knot theory, a prime knot is a knot that is indecomposable in the sense that it cannot be written as the knot sum of two nontrivial knots.

This makes the knot easier to hold and the extra weight allows the loose end of a discharged sling to be recovered with a flick of the wrist.

Smith considered the knot to be strong and secure, saying, " The Boling knot is also so firmly made and fastened by the bridles into the cringles of the sails, they will break, or the sail split before it will slip.

If the loop is made backwards so that the bitter end is on the bottom, the resulting knot will be sideways.

It should be used if the knot is intended to be permanent.

* Allows for the knot to be loaded three ways ; by each end of the main line and the loop

There are also at least three methods to tie the constrictor knot in the bight and slip it over the end of an object to be bound.

Despite its advertised advantage ( quick release ), the slipped constrictor knot can also be hard to release when worked extremely tight in certain rope materials.

For air and marine travel the knot is commonly used.

The bowline ( or ) is an ancient and simple knot used to form a fixed loop at the end of a rope.

A mnemonic used to teach the tying of the bowline is to imagine the end of the rope as a rabbit, and where the knot will begin on the standing part, a tree trunk.

* Loop ( knot ), one of the fundamental structures used to tie knots

* Bend knot, a general term for a knot used to tie two ropes together

The granny knot is a binding knot, used to secure a rope or line around an object.

A miller's knot ( also sack knot or bag knot ) is a binding knot used to secure the opening of a sack or bag.

This knot is also a useful hitch and is known by the name ground-line hitch when used for that purpose.

The butterfly loop, also known as lineman's loop, butterfly knot, alpine butterfly knot and lineman's rider, is a knot used to form a fixed loop in the middle of a rope.

Burger called the knot a lineman's rider stating it was often used by " linemen and especially telephone men ".

Cyrus L. Day relates that, " she had never seen it in Finland, she wrote to me in 1954, but had learned about it from a Spaniard named Raphael Gaston, who called it a whip knot, and told her it was used in the mountains of Spain by muleteers and herdsmen.

" The Finnish name " ruoskasolmu " (" whip knot ") was a translation from Esperanto, the language Ropponen used to correspond with Gaston.

The true lover's knot ( or true love knot ) is a name which has been used for many distinct knots.

The Savoy knot, a type of decorative knot, is a heraldic knot used primarily in Italian heraldry.

Though these properties are well suited to fishing, there are other knots which may provide superior performance, such as the blood knot.

The jury mast knot is often mentioned as a method to provide the anchor points for securing makeshift stays and shrouds to the new mast.

They also provide an appropriate algebraic framework for many knot invariants ( in particular the Jones polynomial ), and have been used in describing the properties of Khovanov homology with respect to tangle composition.