Getting the most from your Knots

[HarveysMinnow]

Close attention to your knots may not help you catch more fish, but it could reduce your chances of losing the better ones.
Like the man said,

[http://www.fieldandstream.com/photos...ode-1001319720 ]

"One thing you can’t buy is a good knot. You have to tie it on your own." As you can see in the article, knot strengths vary widely, and their overall integrity can depend on how well you tie them. To me, this meant that I needed some means of testing the knots I have tied with my own lines.

I like to tinker with things, and since winter is upon us, it seemed a good opportunity to construct something useful. So I made plans to build a rudimentary “tensile tester” to measure approximate knot strength and/or line breaking strength. The fruit of my labor is pictured below. This may represent more time and effort than many of you might want to devote, however, for the few who may want to build something similar, here are a few notes:

All the wood parts are Maple, a very durable hardwood that can be sawed, drilled, and routed to give relatively smooth and precise cuts. You can see that I routed a ‘dovetail keyway’ for the moving tie point sled to ride on. This reduces the possibility of having the whole thing fly apart when testing lines of higher pound ratings. It’s not visible in the photos, but I added a cleat along the bottom centerline so that this gadget can be clamped in the end vise of my woodworking table.

The drive mechanism is a ¼ -20 threaded rod which moves the tie point sled along the keyway as the crank is turned. Two threaded inserts are imbedded in the moving block. The crank wheel (the blue thing) is some kind of tough polymer… something I’d had around for years and never used for anything. Its center hole is threaded to fit the rod and locked in place with a jamb nut. This could have been made from maple also, but I was tired of that blue block taking up space, plus it probably holds a thread better than the wood.

I used an analog gauge, mainly because I already had one, but a digital gauge with a memory might be preferable. The ones I’ve seen locally have no handle for some reason, so this tester would have to be modified to hold any type of scale that cannot be hooked in the slot as shown.

The hitch point mechanism on the moving sled is more a convenience feature than anything else, as it allows me to remove the tie point (usually a hook shank) for easier knot setup. I started out using a regular straight shank hook on the sensor end, but quickly found that when line breakage/knot failure occurs, the hook can fly off dangerously. So now I use a swivel snap for that end of the line.

It should be noted that this gadget lacks the capability for measuring “sudden impact” shock tensioning, which means it cannot simulate the tremendous stresses that some fishermen put on knots/lines with those earth-shattering hook-sets. Knowing the failure point resulting from a slow steady increase in tension may be of little benefit to them.

Throughout the winter, as time permits, I’m going to be turning the crank and testing the knots I tie on a variety of lines. I’m hoping this overall process will result in an improvement of both the strength and reliability of my knots. If there’s enough interest among the Forum membership, I will present some of my findings in a later post. However, I don’t believe anyone else will gain as much from seeing my readings as they will from generating their own results.