Master the Sheepshank Knot. ABoK 1152

The Sheep Shank knot is tied to shorten or take up slack in a rope or to isolate as weak section if you concerned it may be going to break. It can be mastered in minutes by following the simple steps in this video.

The sheep shank knot is not stable and can fall apart under too much load or too little load. The knot has several features which allow a rope to be shortened:

It provides two loops, one at each end of the knot which can be used to pass another rope through. The knot remains somewhat secure under tension; the coarser the rope the more secure it is, as such it works better on the historic spun rope used on the square riggers of days gone past. Modern rope is significantly more slippery so you need to take care to tighten the knot carefully to ensure it locks into place.

Constructing a sheepshank is quick and easy using the loop method:

1) Create a simple loop in the rope, so that the (left) leading end is on top of the (right) trailing end of the loop.
2) Repeat this process further down the rope to create 3 total loops that overlap slightly (similar to a venn diagram with three circles).
3) Reach through the outer two loops and grab either side of the middle loop and pull outward while also keeping the rest of the rope slightly taut.
4) Once the middle loop is pulled through the outer loops, pull on the free ends of the rope to secure.

The result is a flattened loop which is held at each end by a half hitch. If the sides of the flattened loop are pulled away from each other, the flattened loop ends pull out of the half hitches and the knot falls apart, but if the free ends are pulled taut then the knot remains secure.

The Sheep Shank knot and variations of it are include in multiple places of The Ashley Book of Knots. If you would like to learn more why not pick up your own copy of the knot bible....

Get your own copy of "The Ashely Book of Knots" via the following link

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