Documentation on single bowline failures?

Briggs Lazalde wrote:

some sort of flattery

I went to Hogwarts School of Idjetry 

Briggs Lazalde wrote:

My black magic search engine won't pull that one up. I shoulda went to Hogwarts. Or at least community college

You can!

https://www.mountainproject.com/route/109564538/hogwarts

I see various references to my technical paper on 'Bowlines' in this forum.

RalphE - I have sent you a private message.

You might be interested to know that the 'Analysis of Bowlines' paper has been updated and revised.
Link: http://www.paci.com.au/knots.php (at #2 in the table).

At this stage - all technical papers found on the PACI website are provided free as a community service. A lot of people have worked hard over many years to assist me in getting these papers up to a reasonable standard. Obtaining reasonably high quality photos of the various knot structures (in particular) has been exceptionally difficult.
I am not sure how much longer these documents will remain free in the public domain...

The paper on the Zeppelin bend has also been recently updated. It is a truly remarkable knot.

Current project in the pipeline is to revise and fully update the 'Knot Study Guide'. I'm not far away from getting it finalized.

Mark G

rgold wrote:

The recommendation is based on the fact that the bowline won't withstand ring loading.  Since a backed-up bowline does withstand ring-loading, this recommendation only applies to a bowline without any kind of backup, which by now everyone knows is not an appropriate tie-in knot.

Are you saying that a rethreaded bowline without an additional backup knot is not appropriate? I was under the impression that a backup for the bowline is only nessecary if the bowline is not rethreaded, but i am not an expert at all.

A rethreaded bowline needs nothing.

You CAN easily tie a bowline in the middle of a line (not the same as timing a figure 8 on a bight) THROUGH an eyelet or loop or AROUND a body.  Doing that with a figure eight and retracing it would be tough and difficult to inspect.

The bowline is a great knot which climbers do not credit as the best harness tie-in knot. That is probably fair and certainly acceptable given the application of a figure 8 in climbing.  But that does not mean the bowline should be discounted out of existence.  Sailors use bowlines all the time because they need on knot which can be tied in all types of rope (including kermantle), weighted and saturated and still be untied.   In my experience I have never seen a single bowline well dressed and backed up spontaneously untie and I have tied hundreds if not one or two thousand bowlines.

Teach the bowline and teach people to back it up. 

Robert Hall wrote: It is possible to tie a bowline with one hand, but tieing it around your waist with one hand (the so-called "sailor's tie" , because your other hand was holding onto a spar for your life) is quite difficult to work out if you haven't seen it done.

I've tied my bowline into my harness with one hand. It was a hot & exhausting day of complete BS, so my partner suggested we climb something established to end on a less sucky note. At the beginning of the climb I noticed he had me on the wrong way around his grigri, and then 3/4 the way up I noticed the only thing holding the rope up was the sticker. I tied myself in while hanging on a hand jam.

So far as this thread is concerned I doubt there has ever been a single bowline failure; only user errors.

Edit: typo