what about a knot tying tutorial

[Jo-JotheSoundDog]

Hey Dave this site could really use a tutorial on knots. It is one of those great skills that seemed to have slipped through the curriculum of all my classes. And it is something that every theatre tech should know. Just a thought.

[ship]

How about the Klutz Book of Knots? Comes with shoe laces and slots in the pages to tie your knots around. It's available thru Sapsis Rigging http://www.sapsis-rigging.com/ amongst many other sources or similar books on them including the Backstage Handbook.

[Jo-JotheSoundDog]

Ship, are you saying that you think they should just tell everyone to buy the backstage handbook and shut down the site?

I realise there are several books out there for knots and rigging. I just thought I would make a little suggestion on something that could be added to the site that high school students could learn something valuable from.

The big reason why I suggested this is because out of the seven college graduate interns we get a year, one every other year knows more than one knot. The rest of them we have to teach.

So yeah sure everyone could go buy a book about knot tying. But why not about electrics, lighting design, sound, furniture building... or just the backstage handbook...

I thought it was a good idea!

[ship]

Shutting down the site when everyone buy's their copy of the Backstage Handbook? No, it's too limitating of a resource. Doesn't even have proper dirlling speeds for hole saws and #8-23 screw tap info is missing from the text. Too bad the author died a few years ago, because it's about due for another edition.
Besides, pictures are nice, but it's short on useful data about the pictures.

There is great things that could be done with tutorials, movie and photo types of them. Let's say you do a demo on a clove hitch and bowline as they are the primary knots. Instructing just those two knots would be a major effort to demonstrate right and step by step. Than where do you stop, circus knot would be useful, monkey paw not so useful etc.

If it's already well layed out in a lot of books, why not do demos on things that are not, or are at least harder concepts to grasp? For instance, while there might be a lot of info out there on Lekos, Fresnels and other fixtures, there isn't a lot of photo tutorials on what each type looks like in conveying such things as the difference in beam and quality of light between a VNSP and beam projector.

Perhaps I was a bit off or at least harsh by saying that getting the book would be easier to learn from and a better way of learning knots. I learned them on the job and supplimented what I was trained with books as with most things. That's where I come from. For me getting a few good books on specific subjects gives me a lot more base of info than I have ever gotten off the internte.

So I apologize for stepping on the toes of your sugguestion. Perhaps a few tutorials on knots would be useful.


I differ in opinion that it would be easier to view them than read about them or try them in that specific book, especially if while learning knots you pick up useful info about rope, knot strength etc. Those other parts of learning knots/rope (Safe working load of tie line being 40#) are things you learn about as you learn rope. My point is that unless you included such things, the student is still going to have to buy the books or get training on the side. Than above with which knots don't you teach, what info don't you provide with it?

[dvsDave]

Well, I am unfortunately very underqualified to create a tutorial on knots from scratch... knots have been something I am notoriously bad at.

However, I remember a site (affiliated with a boy scout troup, I think?) that had beautiful gif animations of knots being tied. Does anyone know of that site? Because I could contact the webmaster and ask to permission to use his animations and we could then add data on each knots individual specs. I am willing to create and design the tutorial IF we can find media to show how it's done(animations, illustrations, actual photos, movies, flash, etc)

and I would never shut the site down... even if people start thinking of this site as only an online version of The Backstage Handbook (I would love it if we had all that information on our site) But this site is so much more than that and I think the topics that have been discussed in the forums prove that.

But I also constantly wish for more quality content for the site, and I like these suggestions for new tutorials and for new information. If you have any other tutorials in mind, post a new topic in the suggestions forum.

[wolf825]

FWIW, there are already some excellent web sites about knots....here are a few links from my favorites list of what I think are the best ones.. Plus there is an international knot tying guild (who knew...!) that has a website--dont' know that web addy, but I'm sure one of the sites will have a link to it. Enjoy!

http://www.realknots.com


http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/knotlink.htm

http://www.folsoms.net/knots/
(excellent place with animated gif and video demo's!)


-wolf

[LX-88]

I think a tutorial on some of the basic knots is a great idea. Bowline, Square Knot, and Double Uni-Knots would be the three that I would sugest.

FYI, The Ashly Book of Knots is the best knot resource I have ever found.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...books&n=507846