I replaced the lanyard on my Leatherman Rebar today. I thought it would be interesting to hear (and see) what knots you guys use when constructing lanyards. What knots are you guys using?
The two knots I seem to use the most are the Grapvine (double or triple) and the Bosun's Whistle (sometimes called a Diamond) knots. I made this lanyard big enough to use with gloves since it's winter.
In this case, the Bosun's knot forms the loop of the lanyard. It is a fanatically secure knot and also convenient to grab/hold. I also use the knot to wedge in a notch or crack to suspend the tool if there isn't an easy hook around. Plus it's kinda traditional. The Bosun's can be untied with a bit of work.
Once the lanyard gets looped through the eye of the lanyrad ring, the grapevine knot serves to lock the lanyard in place. It's all but impossible to remove the lanyard at this point. The grapevine, once pulled tight, is the very devil to untie; I consider it to be a 'permanent knot'. A determined person with a marlin spike or awl can, with a bit of work, get these teased apart.
I've added a little demo of how I tie each. There are several ways to tie these; I find these methods the easiest. Both are pretty simple knots once you get the hang of them. I'll probably make it look complicated, but, if you have tried these, I highly encourage you to add these functional knots to your arsenal.
Tying the Bosun's:
First, I recommend making sure you have very long tails (working ends) when starting this knot. Toward the end, you can always remove excess as you tighten the knot. There is a lot of weaving involved here and a long tail is very useful.
The knot starts out as a Carrick Bend and then gets worked into the Bosun's. To start, layout a simple loop (bight) with one strand:
Then, like the Carrick Bend, take the other end (or line in this case) and form a loop, but weaving it so the end goes under the standing end of the first line, then over tail of the first line, before crossing itself. This is the Carrick Bend.
Simple, right?
However, be warned, it's important that the tails come out of the knot in opposite directions (as pictured above). It can be tied so that the tails come out on the same side, but this will cause you headaches:
Now, it will become a bit more confusing visually, but the concept is very simple: use the end of one line to trace the original path of the other line, then repeat. That's pretty much it.
Here, I've started taking the green line in a clockwise direction to trace the path of the orange line:
And here is the green line done tracing the orange line ( note that I've had to weave the green line over and under the other lines to exactly match the path of the orange line):
Now I've moved the orange line in a clockwise direction to start tracing the original path of the starting loop of the green line:
The orange line has now traced the original path of the green loop. At this point the knot is all but tied. Note how there is a 'square hole' in the middle of the knot, we want that. Also note that both the bitter ends of the green and orange lines have been brought across their original starting points (standing line). We want that too. And it would be nice if I had longer tails here because we still have a little work to do.....
To finish the knot, take the tails and fish them under and up through the 'square hole' in the middle of the knot:
That's it! The knot is done....but it'll be tidier once it gets tightened up a bit..... Here I've held the two tails, folded the knot down toward the standing ends, and snugged it up a bit:
I know, still a bit of a mess, but keep working the loose strands of the knot (and here you can adjust the length of either the tails or the loop) until it cinches down neatly:
Congratulations, nice knot!
Lastly, here's a quick and easy way to tie a loop with a triple Grapevine:
Wrap a loop back on itself over a round object:
Now wrap the loop around your round object three time (six strands):
As you slip the round object out of the wraps (left to right in this case), feed the loop through the wraps along the space left by your round object. Snug, done.
Before you tighten the knot down, it's possible to move the knot or alter the loop length by carefully feeding the lines in one direction or the other and shifting the wraps as needed. Once this knot gets tightened down and loaded, it's very difficult to untie.
Again, if you haven't tried these before, have a go at them. And have fun. If you run into trouble, there are some demos on YouTube or post a question here and I'll try to answer as well as I can.
Thanks!