WorldBuilding:FAF/Knots

Figure of Eight Knot
The figure of eight is typically used as a stopper knot (ie a knot used to make a section of rope 'thicker' and thereby prevent - 'stop' - it from going through a hole) though it is the only knot I can tie and I have found it perfectly suitable for every task, if you double back on yourself and put the rope through the main loop. It is an extended version of a regular knot.

There are a number of humorous ways to remember it, I was taught to do it by Jamie 'The Viking' and as such I remember it as: 'make a face, strangle it, poke it through the eye'. A more 'child friendly' version that people sometimes use is a story about a rabbit going out of his hole, round a tree trunk, and back down the hole.

Reef Knot
The Reef Knot is used as a binding knot (ie a knot to tie two ends of a rope together, having looped it around two objects to keep them together). It is also often used as a bending knot (ie a knot to tie two ropes together), though this is apparently incorrect and dangerous. It is very common as it is very quick to tie as it just consists of wrapping one end round the other, then crossing them back and wrapping them around again.

It is most notable for a number of different ways to tie it, for example, if they are wrapped together the same way then the loose ends of the rope keep each other from the inside ends reducing friction and causing the knot to easily slip. Alternatively if the inside ends are wrapped around the opposite loose ends this produces a thief knot which looks very similar but is hard to tie by accident. The idea is that you tie this knot when securing your bag and it anyone riffles through it when they tie the knot back up they'd use a reef knot meaning you could tell your bag has been tampered with.

Bowline
A bowline is a knot that is as far as I can tell a binding knot but is never referred to as such.

People who know knots will often say that they can tie a bowline behind there back, in the dark, with one hand. I have never been sure of the exact use case of this, apparently it would be useful if you ever fell down a mine or a well and broke an arm, but I am a little uncertain of breaking just one arm or the idea that the rescuers wouldn't have a special harness that doesn't just work for the small minority of people who can do the aforesaid feat.