All about knots: This website contains descriptions and
illustrations on tying over 35 knots, including: bowline knots, half hitch
knot, overhand knot, hitch knot and many more!
Knots are intertwined loops of rope, cord, string or other
flexible material, used to fasten two such ropes to one another or to
another object. 
Knots, Bends, Hitches, Splices and
Seizings are all ways of fastening
cords or ropes, either to some other object such as a spar, or a ring,
or to one another. The knot is formed to make a knob on a rope,
generally at the extremity, and by untwisting the strands at the end and
weaving them together. But it may be made by turning the rope on itself
through a loop, as for instance, the overhand knot..
A bend and a
hitch are ways
of fastening or tying ropes together, as in the Carrick bend or round spars as the
Studding Sail Halyard Bend and the
Timber Hitch.
A splice is made by untwisting two rope ends
and weaving them together.
A seizing is made by fastening
two spars to one another by a rope, or two ropes by a third, or by using
one rope to make a loop on another, as for example the Racking Seizing, the
Round Seizing, and the Midshipman’s Hitch. The use of the words is
often arbitrary. There is, for instance, no difference in principle
between the Fisherman’s Bend and the
Timber Hitch.
Speaking generally, the Knot and the Seizing are meant to be permanent,
and must be unwoven in order to be unfastened, while the Bend and
Hitch
can be undone at once by pulling the ropes in the reverse direction from
that in which they are meant to hold. Yet the Reef Knot can be cast loose with ease, and is wholly different in principle, for
instance, from the Diamond Knot. These various forms
of fastening are employed in many kinds of industry, as for example in
scaffolding, as well as in seamanship. The governing principle is that
the strain which pulls against them shall draw them tighter. The
ordinary knots and splices are described in every book on
seamanship.
Index of Knots