As you might recall, I questioned the old “Mind the Gap” rule of safer rope placement (‘The Gap’ is the dip between the muscles on the outside of my arm above the red dot in the right hand image below) some while ago after blindly believing it myself for many years. I’m now convinced that, whilst …
I spent this afternoon photographing and documenting the 30 steps of my own box-tie this afternoon. It is the culmination of a series of experiments to come up with a version that doesn’t use conventional cinches, yet has sufficient stability and benefits from the comfort factor of an extra upper wrap. Why did I bother? …
I have deliberated much upon the short-comings of the traditional reef knot style tie off used in, for example, the wrist tie of many takate-kotes. It seems to me that this type of knot is most unsuitable for a load at 90 degrees as this will often capsize the knot into hitches, which have the …
I recently ran intermediate and advanced courses in which I taught the standard OS TK (actually more correctly called a ‘gote or ‘gote shibari as it does not exhibit the typical ‘high hand’ position) and revised the tie with those who professed to know it. Almost all of those who already had a good idea …