UKC

Does anyone have experience or opinions on the use of the alpine butterfly knot (as tied using the end of the rope, not on the bight, as shown here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKdfXCI9rEo) to tie in to the harness belay loop (e.g. for top roping) as an alternative to the rethreaded figure-of-eight?

As I see it, it compares to the figure-of-eight as follows:

Advantages:
- As secure (although I've nothing to back me up on this point)
- Less prone to jamming (easier to untie)
- As quick or quicker to tie
- Less bulky (less rope, lessened possibility of snagging)

Disadvantages
- Easier to get wrong

What do you think?

In reply to Jonny:


Hahahahaha

In reply to jon:
Everyone and his dog has thought about this at some point, right?

In reply to Jonny:

About every two months! Though to be fair not usually at the end of the rope.

In reply to jon:

That's the thing. There are plenty of great variants on commonly used knots (the Zeppelin bend versus the double fisherman's, for example) which is why I find it strange that the figure-of-eight has the monopoly that it has.

Just another instance of groupthink, or has it so few competitors for good reason?

In reply to Jonny:


A bit of both. If everyone does things the same in a way that's pretty good there's less confusion when checking others work, less worry about the weird knot your new partner just tied in with, is it misguided, a mistake or rather clever... very hard to know and the sort of thought you don't really want to be having.

The 8 works when tied right, works when tied wrong, is relatively easy to untie, is easy to check and easy to teach.
jk

In reply to Jonny:

Forgive me, it's just that with the latest thread about the alpine butterfly still warm in its grave... it just made me chuckle, that's all.

In reply to Jonny:
Is it that it's harder to tell if it's not done right than a fig 8 and more complicated to tie if it's being tied around a belay loop rather than the loop just being clipped to with a krab (as it would be in the usual place in middle of a rope)?

In reply to Jonny:

I'd say another potential disadvantage would be that it might not just be easier to get wrong (which is the case with the bowline), but that the wrong knot might pass for the correct one. This usually isn't the case with a bowline - a bad bowline sticks out - you know it's bad just by looking at it, and most of the common mistakes lead to a "knot" that falls apart.
A bad butterfly might pass the cursory check - and only slip under high loads. I don't know if this is the case or not the case - but definitely worth finding more about before considering experimenting.
A quick googly finds this thread: http://ukcaving.com/board/index.php?topic=1919.0
Which claims that it's possible to tie a "false" butterfly, and that it will come undone.

In reply to Jonny:

I use a butterfly at the end of a rope to tie my haul bag in. I always leave a 12 inch tail. Which would be a pain when top roping. I have no idea if I need to do this - a butterfly right at the end just looks worrying in case it rolls. However I have no data on whether it might roll.

Has anyone got a link to a pull test?

In reply to Jonny:

Well, I thought I'd try it out and see. I've certainly never tied an alpine butterfly that way or used it for that purpose before.

First time, following the video, I got it wrong. Second time right, but it didn't look like an alpine butterfly as I know it. So I pulled the two ends apart and yes, it is an alpine butterfly - pretty tricky to reset it back again though.

As others have said I think the main issue is that it's not easy to spot if it's been done correctly, and possibly much more dangerous than a fig 8 if it hasn't.

Another issue (with any knot used for tying in to the harness) is what happens when/if you belay by attaching the belay plate to the rope loop alone. (That's as opposed to attaching it to the harness belay loop or to both - or to neither if you're belaying direct to the anchor). If you then hold a fall the force will try to break the knot by pulling the loop sideways. I'm not sure this alpine butterfly is secure under that load - has it been tested?. We know a fig 8 knot tends to roll over in that situation (which is why it's not recommended as a substitute for the overhand when joining ab ropes) , but the fig 8 seems OK when used to attach to the harness - perhaps because you always add a stopper knot. No stopper with the alpine buttefly in the video clip though, but you could always add one I guess.

Martin

In reply to Jonny:

You just wouldn't, heck, people look like tools using a bowline these days. Trying to be too ala mode

In reply to jon:

You should try hanging out with cavers. You'd love it

In reply to zimpara:


To whom ? the bowline is the obvious knot to use if you are looking for low jamming and easy to inspect

In reply to Jonny:

Having just highlighted the advantages of the alpine butterfly in another thread, I now find myself uncomfortable with this application. Although all of your points are valid, I'd look at another possibility that some have already mentioned, that of the knot working loose. I would at the very least put a long tail and some sort of stopper knot on top, but honestly I would go for the figure of eight instead every time. I'd wager that it is much more stable on climbing rope than the butterfly. I've noticed from the limited sailing I've done (where bowline is king), that the differing construction and materials used in sailing ropes, make knots which are bomber in one discipline not (sorry) necessarily in the other.

In reply to SenzuBean:


Only if you know what a bad bowline looks like, which is pretty much the case for every other knot. The bowline is not special in this regard.

In reply to planetmarshall:


Well I know most bad bowlines just "fall apart" in the hands. And the cowboy bowline is totally safe (if tied with a stopper). I don't know of any other stable bad bowline forms, that look the same (I'm just talking standard bowline, not yosemite tucks or anything). Is that what you mean?

In reply to Jonny:



It goes back to an instructional system devised in the late 60's, when waist belts were the norm. The tie-on was a normal figure - of - eight loop attached to the belt by a large krab. Belaying involved taking a bight through the same krab and then tying an F-o-8 with the bight around the other ropes. The point of this was that beginners only had to learn one knot to be safe on the crag, so it was adopted by centres around the country for the sake of convenience.

The F-o-8 is a good, versatile knot for beginners, a jack-of-all-trades and master of none. For the rope-savvy there are better tie-ons and better ways of anchoring.

In reply to Andy Long:


True, but then the rope-savvy need to understand that there are important advantages to having a small set of generally used knots that pretty much everybody can quickly learn to tie reliably, recognise and cross check and that simplification isn't necessarily "dumbing down". It's a hazard if your partner can't quickly spot that you have tied your obscure-but-optimal knot wrong on stance 12 of a 20 pitch ab, when you've been on the go for fifteen hours, it's getting dark and you're both exhausted.

The essential set of known-by-everybody knots probably needs to be a bit bigger than one, though. I'd say fig-8, clove & edk as essential. Second tier bowline, munter, butterfly. Double fisherman & water knot/ring bend used to be essential when people tied their own slings, but not any more.

In reply to Andy Long:

Funny you should mention its historical descent - I thought of the figure-of-eight as the not equivalent of the qwerty keyboard, although perhaps that's being mean to the knot.

To those mentioning factors other than the narrow functioning of the knot itself, I tend to agree, although I still think it's perfectly possible that the set of orthodox knots that are prescribed for each possible category of use is sub-optimal, even considering such factors as ease of checking, the evilness of evil impostors, etc. The (double) zeppelin is a near perfect knot in every way, and yet the double fisherman's is still the bend of choice, despite jamming like a rastaman at the drop of a hat (or something even lighter).

Time for some testing, perhaps.

In reply to Jonny:


Lovely phrase. But surely jamming like a rastaman was a feature rather than a bug of the double fisherman in it's normal climbing use, semi-permanently attaching cord to nuts & hexes where it was supposed to stay tied and need minimal inspection for five years or more? Admittedly it was less of a plus when used for joining ab ropes.

The zeppelin bend is clever but looks too scary, and the tails coming out at right angles might be a disadvantage in some situations.

In reply to Jonny:


I can't speak for my dog but I can't say that I've ever considered it

Surely you would either to clip in with a krab or crawl through the middle of the knot in order to tie it?

In reply to AlanLittle:

I am with Andy Long on this one.

FFIW my knot set is
Bowline and stopper
overhand
half hitch
clove hitch
standard prussik
french prussik
EDK
double and triple fishermans
Nicely tied shoe laces

Rarely, if ever, use anything else apart from a Tarbuck knot which is oh so useful for so many non climbing jobs.

Forgot the Italian Hitch

In reply to Jonny:

I'm not sure the alpine butterfly entirely deserves its reputation for being easy to untie after loading as compared to other knots. It's a very satisfying knot, beautiful even, and I use it a lot but functionally I don't think it really offers anything that can't be achieved with a simple overhand on the bight.

If you're looking for an alternative knot to tie in with, may I suggest the re-threaded bowline on the bight? It's very neat, very secure, and is more popular than the fig-8 with lots of climbers elsewhere in Europe. (Germans and Dutch particularly, I believe, though I may be wrong.)

In reply to Rick Graham:


Good point, forgot these


Haven't used one in anger this century.


Used to use that for tent guylines, worked well.

In reply to deepsoup:


Not sure I fancy trying the untie an overhand from a haul bag after a week on a wall

In reply to David Coley:

Right---good chance you'll have to cut it off. (We are speaking of the overhand knot here, not anything more precious.)

As for the butterfly as a tie-in knot, I think the main point is that we already have enough perfectly good knots for the purpose---there simply isn't any need or any good reason for something else. The figure-8 is the general-purpose knot, the bowline (or double bowline) with stopper is superior when untying after loading, and isn't even remotely the death trap some contemporary climbers make it out to be, and for security and ease of undoing the bowline on a bight (more popular in Europe than in the UK or US) is actually better than the other two more common knots. (It will probably never catch on with half and twin rope users, as the tie-in portion of the knot has two strands so four strands through the harness tie-in points...)

A hearty chuckle goes out to the lad who thinks bowline users are somehow aspiring to be "a la mode." The bowline was the tie-in knot of choice almost from the beginning of climbing (yeah, I know you guys used that Tarbuck guy-line tensioner thingy). It is practically a museum piece.

As for the issue of mis-tying a bowline, it is true that the cowboy or Dutch Navy bowline is just as good as the classical version and shouldn't count as mis-tying at all. But there is a possibility that has not, to my admittedly faulty knowledge, ever been tested as a tie-in knot, and that is the Eskimo bowline http://tinyurl.com/hx6bbc4 . This is very easy to spot, as the standing part of the rope comes out of the knot in a different way. In any case, in 59 years of tying in with bowlines and climbing with others who do so as well, I've never seen anyone tie an Eskimo bowline by mistake. (I think there are basically sixteen possibilities when forming a bowline, four of them are either a classical or cowboy bowline, four are an Eskimo bowline, and eight just fall apart in your hands.)

In reply to David Coley:

That's fair I guess, is the AP really all that much better? In my (admittedly fairly limited experience) not really. It's also fully capable of being an absolute pig to untie after heavy loading.

In reply to rgold:


You are absolutely right. I use it on single ropes - having learned it from a hot babe from the DAV - but still use figure 8s for half ropes. More because I know I probably won't be untying them for quite some time, and don't plan to fall on them all that frequently, than because of the bulk.

In reply to deepsoup:



I've never had a problem, even after heavy loading.

In reply to Jonny:
I'm going to through this in - the venerable ring bend. Can't roll like an overhand, is basically a rethreaded overhand threaded the other way, doesn't require a stopper knot, sits neatly on your harness like a bowline, is relatively easy to untie, easier than an eight and harder than a bowline and pretty much everybody in the world can tie an overhand, so pretty much every one could tie a ring bend. Also called the competition knot...

youtube.com/watch?v=Au8KiUS4RCc&

In reply to Jonny:
I am aware of several different knots for tying in on the end of a rope but for me the safest knot from the usual suspects is the one that you can tie correctly & consistently and your mates can check as being OK.

Many of your intuitions regarding the best tie in knot spoke to tradition pùtting forth its reasonless opinion, and doing a pretty good job at getting the right answer, all things considered (and that's the key point, in the end).

I tested the un-collapsed butterfly, and although when it's receiving load through the centre of the loop it does a brilliant job, if the load is biased towards the side of the loop that leads to the free end, the knot deforms uglily, in a way that the figure-of-eight doesn't (rare as this type of loading may be).

The Zeppelin's big flaw, more testing suggested, is loosening when not under tension. Perhaps jammin' is what we want in a bend (posh German 'band'?), after all.