Four Essential Knots EVERY DIVER Should Know .

There are a few knots that every scuba diver should know. You typically learn these in your Advanced Open Water Certification, but they'll come up time and time again if you ever look into specialties like search and recovery, wreck, or cavern diving, as well as in technical diving, and even your professional courses like Divemaster and your instructor course. In this video, you'll learn how to easily tie a bowline, sheet bend, and two half hitches, as well as a bonus knot that I'm going to throw in that's not typically taught in certification courses, but is extremely valuable, and every diver should have it in their repertoire. Let's get into it. I'm Thomas Hughes, a professional scuba instructor, and on this channel, you'll see videos on scuba education, equipment, experiences, and environmental awareness. Let me quickly cover some of the terminology I might use during the demonstrations, and then we'll get right into the knots. And also, I have chapters down below, so if you want to skip to a specific knot, feel free to do so, and I recommend saving this video in like a scuba diving tip playlist or something like that, so you can reference it later if need be. First, we have what's called the working end or running end, which is going to be the line that we use to actually go ahead and tie the knot itself. That's in contrast to what's known as the standing end, which is going to be the more stationary object or the stationary end of the line or rope that we're using to tie off the knot. And I promise this will make a lot more sense when we start getting into the demonstrations, and I'm actually going to be using two different colored ropes, so it'll be a lot easier for you to distinguish, you know, what ends doing what and how the lines are actually laying together. Let's start with the bowline or bowline knot. The bowline is one of the most versatile knots, and some people call it the every knot. A bowline creates a reliable but easily untied loop that's versatile and can be tightened under pressure without actually loosening the knot, so the harder you pull, the tighter it gets. And while technically, if you're trying to save a life for rope climbing or something like that, there might be some extra things you want to do, like adding a half hitch. This bowline knot is something that we use in diving all the time when we need to rig, say, a lift bag or tie off something like that. If you only have time to learn one knot, the bowline's the one you're going to want to tie. So for this demonstration, I'm going to be using this orange rope here, and it is a little bit long, but you can still see, for demonstration purposes, how we would tie this knot. Now, there's a mnemonic that a lot of people will use, and I think that's taught in the Boy Scouts actually, about a rabbit and a tree, so I'm going to go ahead and use that because that's actually how I learned this knot, and I think it's really helpful. But to start with, we're going to take our stationary line, and we're going to form a loop in it. So just kind of a figure six, kind of curl over the line like that. We are then going to take our lead end, which is why having a long rope is a little bit difficult for this, but we'll take our lead end, and our lead end over here is actually what's going to be used to tie the knot. So this is where the mnemonic comes into play. We say the lead end is our rabbit, this is the hole, and this is the tree standing up. And the rabbit is going to come out of the hole, around the tree, and back into his hole. And you can see he's coming through, and where that lead line started, we can pull tight there, and pull this left side, and we'll tighten up the knot. So like I said, under tension, it tightens up even more. But it's also very easy to untie, so let me demonstrate it one more time here. And I'm going to make this hole a little bit further in the line, just to help with the length of this a little bit here. So there we go. So I have my tree, which is this stationary line up here. I have our hole, and I've got our lead line, which will act as our rabbit. The rabbit comes out of its hole, goes around the tree, back into its hole. Now I'm going to take the two lines where the rabbit went, I'll take the tree and the hole line, I'll pull, and that makes our loop. And again, tighten under pressure, under tension, and it's still very easy to untie. And that is our bowline, or some people will say a bow line. By the way, if you're wondering where I got these ropes from, there are a couple kits available on Amazon, but the one that I picked up also included this card pack that shows you how to tie the knots that we tied today, as well as some additional knots as well, and I found it really convenient. So if you want this one, the link's down in the description. Next, we'll cover the sheet bend. A sheet bend is a useful knot when you need to extend the length of a line, especially when they're two different sizes, though they work when they're the same size as well, like we're going to use in this demonstration. So I'll use two different colored ropes, so it's a little bit easier for you to tell the difference between the two lines. And I apologize, I don't have another color other than black and orange right now, so this black line might blend in a little bit, but hopefully there's enough separation with the white that you can see what's happening. For this demonstration, I am going to use the black rope as my stationary rope, and I will use the orange as our lead line, so it's much easier to see what's happening. So first thing I'm going to do is I am going to make a little bit of a bend in the line here or in the rope, and I'll take my lead line, and I'm going to feed it through that hole. I will bring it around the back of both sides of my other line. We can give myself a little bit of slack here. Then I'm going to bring it back and under itself, so under my lead line or my orange line in this case, and I'll grab this right side, both sides. I'm going to grab both sides of the black rope, and if I pull, we get our sheet bend, which that's not coming loose at all, and that just extended the length of line that I have or the length of rope in this case. So this one's also very easy to undo, and you might want to add like a half hitch or two at the end to tie it off, but it's actually pretty similar to the bowline that we just covered, and again, this is one that we'll do for our advanced open water class as well as for other paddy specialties and things like that too. So this is a useful one to know, but again, you know, have your loop here. So think of this almost as the hole for the rabbit in a sense, and we're going to come out, come around the back side, give ourselves some slack. We take this, and instead of going through the hole, we're going to go under ourselves instead. So again, we're coming under the orange rope, and then we can pull both orange and both black at the same time to snug up the knot, and there is our sheet bend. Okay, let's wrap up with the knot that's taught in most scuba courses, which is the two half hitches. This is a great knot because it allows you to tie off to a mooring ring or maybe a post or something like that, and technically it can be tied one-handed as well. I know with the other knots, I was somewhat doing it one-handed, but this one specifically can be done one-handed fairly easily. So we'll go ahead and show you how to tie the two half hitches. Now stick around after this though, because I am going to show a bonus knot after this that's not taught in any of the PADI courses that I've taken, even as an instructor so far, and it's really a shame because it's a very useful knot that a lot of people use on their equipment. So for two half hitches, I'm going to tie off to a post, which will be in this case, simulated by our black rope here, and I'm going to use our orange line again as our lead line and the one that we're going to use to tie the knot itself. So what we'll do is we'll take our lead line and we'll go around the object we are going to hitch off to, in this case, this rope here. I'm going to give myself a little bit of slack just to give myself some space to work with again. And now this will be the, in my opinion, the easiest knot you do, but take whatever you do, just remember you always go the same direction. So in this case, I'm going left. My lead line is my left line and I'm going to go over right. And I'm going to pull it through and you can snug it down if you want. That's a single hitch. Okay. Now I'm going to go left over right again and pull it through. And that's going to finish my two half hitches. One, two. So these are also something you can add to the end of a sheet bend or a bowline to add just an extra lock, I guess you could say, to help keep that knot from slipping even more so. But this half hitch is a good way to, again, tie off in a mooring or a post or something like that. So let me show you it one more time and I'll try to do it one-handed while on camera, which we always know how live demonstrations go. So let's see how this goes here. But let's say, again, I'm going to take my orange rope or line and I want to tie off to our black post or hitch or mooring or whatever it is. So I'm going to go over. Okay. I'm going to give myself a little bit of slack here. We're going to go left over right, left over right, bring it through and it'll look like this. And I am going to snug it down with both hands, I guess, just for ease of the camera. There's my single hitch. And then I'm going to go left over right again, bring it through. And now I could pull it tight. But again, for the camera purposes and framing, so I don't cross the lens here too bad, we're going to snug it with two hands. And that is two half hitches. One, two. And let me do it one more time just to make sure to show you keeping it the same direction. So again, giving myself some slack here. I'm going over the line. I'm doing left over right. Pull it through. Left over right. Pull it through. Two half hitches. All done. Next is our bonus knot, a fisherman's knot. A fisherman's knot isn't taught in most classes in PADI. And I don't really understand why, as it's quite versatile and it's very useful to know. And it allows you to do things like have adjustable loops for say the bungee for a computer on your wrist or maybe a compass that's wrist mounted as well. This is also how you can make a regulator necklace out of some bungees. So you can have your necklace around your neck and have the little spot for your regulator to sit in. So when you donate your long hose, if you have a long hose set up, your primary is right around your neck and you can dip your head down, grab that regulator instead. So I'm going to show you how to make that. Again, I'm not sure why PADI doesn't teach this specifically, but I think it's a very useful knot to know. Perhaps one reason is that it is something that's used more in technical setups as well for say a canister light for cave diving when you have that big light pack, you want to have like an adjustable loop there or dry suit diving where you need to adjust for the thickness of your dry suit and undergarments. And you need to have some loops that can adjust that way. So perhaps that's the reason why, but again, I find this to be a very useful knot that many people should know. Okay, so I will say that for this demonstration, this rope is a little bit long for what I was hoping to do, but I am going to make an adjustable loop, which is the whole point of a fisherman's knot. So in this case, I've created a loop by just kind of, you know, turning the ends over itself. You can do this with two different lines if you need to as well and have kind of an adjustable loop on there. So depending on your use case, you can do that, but we're basically going to tie a half hitch on each side and we'll be able to make an adjustable loop that way. So if we go around ourselves here, we're going to go around and come through and pull tight. And we're going to do the same thing on the other side. So we'll come around, backside, we'll pull through and pull tight. You can see we get this space here, which this would be a blown up version of a regulator necklace on a bungee, for example, where your regulator would come in here. This piece would go around your neck, but specifically these ropes can slide. So because these can slide, we can make a very large loop that then tightens against itself. So when I pull these, the knots hit each other and it won't get any bigger than this. Or I can pull them apart and I can make a much smaller loop here. And you can understand that if this rope was a lot smaller, maybe this loop would be something that, again, I would hold a canister with, for example, and then I can snug it up by just pulling tight and getting these knots under tension to where a loop will not get any larger than what it is currently. So let me do this again and I'll try to make a little bit of a smaller loop for you and I'll cut to that. Okay, so let's try this again and I'm gonna make a loop about this size so it's a lot easier to see. It is gonna mean my lead lines are a lot bigger, but that'll be okay. I think this will make more sense for the demonstration. So what we're gonna do is I'm gonna start, it doesn't matter if you start left or right, but I'm gonna take my lead line here and I'm gonna tie a single hitch, just a half hitch around here. So I'm going around the backside and then I'm gonna come up and through myself just like a regular two half hitch that we just did. We're just gonna do a single hitch on this case. Okay, and I'm gonna pull snug by just using the lead line so I don't make my loop any bigger in this case. So I'm just gonna kind of snug it down, manipulate it a little bit here. There we go. And pull tight. There we go. Okay, there's my single hitch on one side. Now I'm gonna repeat the process on the other side using my other lead line here. So again, take my lead line. Pass it so it's on the right side here. There we go. I'm gonna take my lead line. I'm gonna do the same thing. I'm gonna go around the backside and pull all my slack through. I'm gonna pass it through itself. So again, we're just tying a half hitch on this side. Okay, and I'm gonna snug it down as best as I can by not letting it slip down too far. There we go. Tighten it down. Good to go. Okay, so there we go. Now we have a loop. This again could be a regulator necklace for example with our little spot for our regulator there. We would want to clip these lead lines and burn them down so they don't have huge tassels hanging off the end here. But now what we can do is we can tighten this and when it gets to here, no matter how hard I tie, no matter how hard I pull, I mean, it's not gonna get the loop any bigger and then I can adjust these and pull them apart some if I need to and make myself a little bit of a smaller loop and that sort of thing. So it's actually very versatile and again, it gives you this kind of double slip knot so you can adjust your loop size and attach different things and then kind of cut them off when you get into the right loop. And again, this is something that people can use for wrist straps, for computers for example or a compass that's mounted on your wrist where you want to have an adjustable loop so you can adjust for the size of your dry suit and wet suit. So that is the fisherman's knot. I also wanted to include a couple just general tips for working with line especially when you're cutting it to length whether it's a rope, line or bungee that you're gonna be using on your kit. You want to make sure you burn the end so there's no fraying or anything like that and you can actually see as it comes into focus the rope here that I've been using has this burnt end and you can see that it's been burned and I kind of mashed the end in and that way it melts it down so it doesn't start fraying at the end for me at all and something that you're definitely gonna wanna do if you buy this kit or if you again are cutting line, bungee or anything like that. So the knots I showed today are great for working with lines and ropes when you need to rig a lift bag or hitch something or something like that but what if you need to tie something like a bolt snap to a piece of equipment and you want to have that accessory tied off securely? Well that's exactly what I talk about in this video. Click or tap the screen now so you can check that out and with that stay safe, have fun and let's go diving.