Just in case there are some among us that are not knotters (is that a word??), a bend is a knot to connect two ropes together. I’ve been looking at the differences and similarities in these three bends and reliable ways to tie them.

I can’t really vouch for the security of any of these bends although I have used the Zep a lot, even for joining two climbing ropes on a couple of occasions. We tied F8 stoppers in each tail. Noticing the distance the stopper was from the body of the knot, the Zep hadn’t budged. Once unloaded, the Zep was a snap to untie. Although the only load was my weight, which wouldn’t be considered a heavy load on the knot, per se, it certainly untied easily at that load. Sooo….

IF YOU USE THESE KNOTS, DO SO AT YOUR OWN RISK. IT IS UP TO THE USER TO DETERMINE THAT THE BENDS HAVE BEEN TIED CORRECTLY AND IF THEY ARE SUITABLE FOR LIFE SUPPORT. IT'S POSSIBLE THERE ARE ERRORS IN THE PHOTOS OR DESCRIPTIONS SO DETERMINE FOR YOURSELF IF THE KNOT IS CORRECT BEFORE YOU USE IT.

I found that all three can be started the exact same way – with a loop. They all are two distinct interlocking loops, and it is the interlocking that makes them unique from one another.

There are numerous ways to tie each of them incorrectly, so one of my goals was to find a reliable method to tie each bend and to identify procedures that help insure accuracy and distinction between the methods needed to tie the knots.

Here’s the starting point for the butterfly and Hunter bends – two interlocked loops:


Notice the tail of the right loop (green) is over the top of the standing part. Also notice that the red cord is fed through the top of the green loop. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT. If it is fed through from the back side, the knot won’t form correctly.

The reason the red ‘loop’ is just a bight (red), is because you can’t finish it until you decide which bend you are going to tie. To tie the butterfly the loop would be finished like this:



Notice the tail of the red loop also has the tail over the top of the standing part. The Hunter is the opposite of this as we’ll see in a minute, but getting back to the butterfly, here’s how the ends tuck into the center loop formed by the overlapping of the red and green loops:



Both tails wrap around to the back of the loops and are fed through the center loop formed by the overlapping red and green loops. When tightened, it should look like this, and notice how it looks just like a butterfly loop also shown for comparison. In fact, the butterfly bend looks like a butterfly loop knot where the loop has been cut. However the details may not be so clear from the pic:



Moving to the Hunter, the loops would look like this:



In case you don’t see the difference in these loops and the butterfly loops, the green loop is exactly the same but the tail of the red loop is on the bottom side of the standing part instead of the top. Again notice that the red cord is fed through the green loop from the top side. Next we tuck the ends.



The tail of the red loop is wrapped to the front of the loops and inserted in the overlapping loop formed by the green and red loops and the green is done exactly as before with the butterfly. The finished product looks like this:



And the other side:



Now the Zeppelin. Again the Zep starts with the very same left loop (the green loop):



But, the red loop is distinctly different in two ways than the butterfly and Hunter. One, THE RED LOOP IS NOT INSERTED INTO THE GREEN LOOP, and two, it is the exact opposite of the green loop. Notice the red loop tail is downward and under the standing part of the rope. Next, we overlap the loops:



Essentially, the green loop is simply laid over the top of the red loop. IT WILL NOT WORK TO LAY THE RED LOOP OVER THE GREEN LOOP. Next we tuck the tails through the loop formed by the overlap of the green and red loops:



The green tail wraps around the back and is fed through the center loop from the back side. The red tail wraps around the front and is fed through to the back side. When the knot is dressed, it should look like this:



And the other side pretty much looks the same:



I HAVE NO IDEA ABOUT BREAKING STRENGTHS, ETC. But I expect Hunabku and I will do some knot pulling when he gets here.