This has always bugged me. In books on knots, in my Boy Scout handbook, virtually every guide to knots includes the Sheepshank knot. It’s the most ridiculous, most useless knot I’ve ever seen. I’ve never been required to tie one, never had occasion to use one. I’ve never seen anyone use one in Scouting, Sailing, Pioneering, or any activity I’ve been involved in. But they always show it.
It doesn’t joing two things together. It;s not a very tight knot – it’ll slip apart easily if the rope goes slack, and only stays tied under tension.
It’s supposed to be used to shorten a length of rope. But most people will simply retie the rope so any excess falls on the leftover slack. If they can’t untie the line, but need less slack, they’ll gather up the slack and knot it into a simple double overhand knot – unlike the sheepshank, it won’t undo itself if the rope goes slack.
Yeah, I know you can keep the knot from undoing itself by sticking sticks or something in the loops. But that’s a kludge. If I tie an overhand knot I don’t need the sticks. Or you can pass the ends through the loops. But if I’m trying to take up slack in a rope with the ends tied, that’s stupid – I’d have to untie the ends. And if I’m doing that, I can retie the rope so there isn’t slack in the first place.
So what’s the point of this knot? Why does it persist in so many manuals if it’s so wimpy? Does anybody use this? Or am I missing some key point here, and the Sheepshank is really a wondrous creation whose positive benefits I have, in my ignorance, overlooked?
See my comments above about using the sheepshank to shorten rope. Why is this better than any other method? Is the tripling of the path better for strength? As I say, I’ve never seen anyone use this knot – not even to shorten rope.
Yes, you can shorten a rope by making a bight in the middle and tying any old knot at all in the bight. But it’s hard to get anything resembling tension that way. If you tie, say, an overhand knot in a bight on a slack rope, the rope will still be pretty slack, just not as much. And it’s tough to tie an overhand on a bight if you only have a little bit of slack, while a sheepshank can be tied on almost any slack at all. It may not be the most commonly-needed knot, but it’s the best there is at what it does, and it’s not like it’s difficult to learn, so you might as well include it in your ropertoire.
Any knot in a rope will wekaen the overall strength of the rope. The question is, how much will you weaken it. This is one advantage of the sheepshank. All other things being equal, it puts a lot less stress on the rope, weakening the rope to a lesser degree than other solutions.
**Cal ** mentions an overhand knot (presumeably a loop) to take up the slack. Not only is this type of arrangement prone to slipping, but the way the rope doubles back on itself weakens the system significantly more than the sheepshank.
Cal also mentions another reason *in favor * of using the sheepshank. It comes loose easily when the rope is slackened. If you used nearly any other knot to take up slack in a line and then applied a load to that line, there’s a very good chance that your know may never come out again. The sheepshank, on the other hand, will free itself easily when you need it to, and not before.
Ol Peculiar (with lots of rope rigging experience)
I can tie a double overhand (meaning I grab the slack, double it, and tie it into an overhand) with a lot less rope than even a short sheepshank requires.
Some of the responders say that sheepshanks hold even less well with modern ropes.
Thanks, olpeculiar. But the advantage I list is also a disadvantage – unless that line is kept under constant tension the sheepshankl will come undone. That makes me wary of using it. The kind of knotted loop I described may “be prone to slipping” under heavy loads, but it’s what I’ve usually seen used, and I’ve never seen it come undone. Not that I’d trust my life to it. I’d still use it before a sheepshank if there’s a chance the tension would come off.
Well, you’ve got to consider the application. Obviously (or, I thought obviously) the sheepshank is intended to be used in a static application, where the line will not slacken. If that doesn’t suit your application, then the sheepshank is not the knot for you. It’s not the knot’s fault. Like Chronos said, it’s the best there is at what it does. But you can’t critcize the knot simply because you are tempted to use it in an application for which it is unsuited. That’s like blaming the design of the Challenger crew capsule because some of the crew members were killed when they hit the water. It wasn’t designed to perform in that situation.
I’ll defend the sheepchank because when it works, it works better than anything else. I can’t blame people questioning the sheepshank’s usefulness - its range of application is narrow, but it still fills a niche. That said, I’ve always been a little wary of the sheepshank myself. I don’t know about modern ropes, but I know that it can have a hard time holding in newer, stiffer ropes, or with larger diameter ropes such as 1" manila. I have long acknowledged these limitations, and honestly, the only time I can recall using the sheepshank would be in low-risk applications like taking up slack on a tarp or fly while out camping.
I had a Ranger friend explain to me one time that this knot is used in rapelling. You can tie one near your anchor point at the top and, this is the tricky part, cut the correct length of rope in the middle of the knot. Then, when you are at the bottom, shake the rope a few times till the knot loosens and the majority of your rope drops back down to you. Don’t know if it really works, never had the balls to try it.
I’m not blaming the knot – I’m questioning its ubiquity in knot-tying manuals when I’ve never seen the thing used and never known a situation where it would be. You can say that it’s always good when used undfer tension, but my experience has been that rope under tension has a tendency to get jostled, bounced, or otherwise temporarily lose its tension. Then the knot comes undone. Which makes the knot worse than useless.
So I’m not pitting the knot. If anything I’m pitting those authors of knot books – and I’ve read a lot of them – who never tell you when the knot is useful. And, more important, when not to use it. Thus far I haven’t seen anything that does this. The most useful piece of information I’ve found has been looking on my own and finding that they use this in tying up loads for trucking.
Cal - Now that’s a *really good * point. I never thought about it before, but manuals that show you how to tie knots rarely detail when the knot would be helpful to use, and when you’d want to avoid it. I agree with you 100%. For instance, they might show you the Butterfly Knot, which is a stunningly useful knot for the tiny percentage of the population who might need to put a loop into the middle of a rope without weakening the system signifcantly. Used to be a mainstay of rock climbers before modern nylon kernmatle…
I always used a trucker’s hitch when tying a load down on a truck - again, I share your concerns about the sheepshank’s ability to hold in such a dynamic situation.
So, olpeculiar, as you are expert in knots, I must ask the question:
When do you use the Sheepshank?
When is the tension strong and steady enough to guarantee that it won’t come undone? Why wouldn’t the rope be the correct length beforehand? Have you yourself ever used it?
I gotta know. Even back in Boy Scouts, when I was instructing the Tenderfoots (Tenderfeet?) how to tie their knots, I’d say that I had no idea when you’d use this knot. Several internet sites list it among the “10 most useful knots” for some reason. But the only time I’ve ever tied one was to amuse myself and remind myself that I knew how to do it.
Well, like I said in my previous posts, I’ve been leary of the knot myself. As you accurately surmised, it is often just as easy to retie one of the ends to the rope to take up the slack. But there have been times when both ends of the rope were either not easily untied or not easily accessed. The few times that I can recall were out in the wilderness (probably Boy Scouts like you), taking up the slack on some non-life-threatening application.
I can imagine scenarios where the load will remain under tension: A weight at the other end of a pulley, with the sheepshank on this end of the pulley. Or perhaps pulling back a tree branch, where the elasticity of the branch keeps the line under tension, even if the wind blows. The likelihood of these or similar situations arising may be slight, but they could still happen.
It could be used to bypass a weakened section of rope as **Fear Itself ** noted, but I’d prefer to use something like the Butterfly Knot, which can do the same thing without fear of coming undone should tension be lost on the line.
I would never use it for a load on a truck - too much chance of the weight shifting and unravelling the sheepshank. And as a (former) rock climber, I would never in a million years use it at the top of a rappel in the manner described by UncleRojelio. You are just asking for an express ride to the ground. (The proper method is to double the rope over through a sling at the top of the rappel, and then to pull one end from the bottom in order to retrieve your rope.)
I’m sure you were only kidding, but I’m not trying to pass myself off as some kind of expert on knots. I’ve had a lot of experience, and I know what I know (or at least what I think I know). And I’m just expressing my opinions about things - which I guess is the whole point of all this, yeah?
If you’ve got soft, city boy hands from counting money all your life, it’s invaluable in convincing an old sea captain to take you along as ballast on a shark hunting charter.
Here’s something which suggests the sheepshank is useful for hangings at sea where it is desirous that the knot come undone quickly and the distance of fall could be regulated precisely.