A fine fist of it

Frustrated by abortive attempts to tie a monkey’s fist knot freehand, Charles Morland made a jig to simplify matters

In the repertoire of sailors’ knots, the monkey’s fist (along with the Turk’s head) is one of the most decorative. It is also one of the most effective ways of adding weight to the end of a rope to be used for a heaving line. In theory, it’s also a relatively simple knot to tie. First, make three or four vertical coils near the bitter end of the rope. These need to be about 20 times the diameter of the rope. Next, an equal number of horizontal turns are made around the middle of the vertical turns. Finally, make another equal number of vertical turns around the horizontal turns but inside the first set of vertical turns. All that then remains is to insert a small, hard, spherical object into…

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Practical Boat Owner (Digital) - 1 Issue, June 2015

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