The Angler’s Loop starts with an underhand loop, the working end under the standing part. With the bend drawn up tight, the working ends will stick straight out. Notice how the cords create two interwoven half-hitches. The bottom working end goes through the loops from the top. The top working end goes through both loops from underneath. The working ends are on the outside of the loops, top and bottom. Slide the the flipped loop under the other loop. The Zeppelin Bend starts with two mirror-image overhand loops.
I cut off whatever I need, making allowances for the length taken up by the knot, melt the ends’ woven sheaths to keep them from unraveling, and in a couple of minutes I have just the right bungee for the job.Ĭhristopher Cunningham is the editor of Small Boats Monthly. I get long lengths of bungee cord in an assortment of diameters cut from spools at my local marine supply store and stock them my shop. With a toggled loop at the throats and an adjustable loop above the leathers, two pairs of oars become an easily carried bundle. The pipe toggles are easier to engage with the bungee under tension and less likely to slip free. I like plastic-pipe toggles better than the plastic balls used on commercial products. The homemade toggled loop, cut to fit, is quick and easy to apply, and won’t dent spars or snag.įor a stopper knot, the common Figure-8 works well with bungee cord and is useful for making toggled loops. The bungee with the hooks take an extra wrap too the hooks engage easily enough but can dent the soft spruce spars and snag things. The bungee with knobs on the end takes an extra wrap, and then is too tight to connect the ends easily. To tie the Angler’s Loop to anything, the thing gets involved in the tying and has to slip through the first loop you make.Ī spritsail, wrapped around its mast, gets bundled with the boom and sprit. With a Bowline, it is easy to tie the loop to something after you thread the line through that, you just carry on tying the knot as usual. Learning to tie the Angler’s Loop is the first step, and the next is learning to tie it with the loop the right size and the tail end neither too long nor too short. I’ve read that it was used when fishing line was made of gut of some sort, which must have been slippery and stretchy. The Angler’s Loop is the bungee equivalent of a Bowline. To add a bit of bungee cord to a rope, or to make a ring of bungee cord like an oversized rubber band, the Zeppelin Bend is the one to use. As its name suggests, the knot was used by the crews of lighter-than-air ships to join together two lines and hold under great strain without breaking or becoming hopelessly jammed. The Zeppelin Bend will securely tie two bungee cords together. There are two special knots that do work with bungee cord, and while they are a bit more complex than a sheet bend and a bowline, they hold themselves together and can be easily untied.
And the hog rings I have are sized for thick bungee cord I’m not aware of hog rings small enough for 1/8″ bungee. I don’t carry any of the equipment to do this work in the field, so if that were the only way to fabricate custom cord, I’d be stuck with what I’ve had the foresight to make at home. To make bungee cords for specific uses, I’ve used hog rings to create eyes in bungee cords and covered up the rings and the tail end with heat-shrink tubing. A sheet bend, even a double sheet bend, will come apart if you push the joined lines together, and a bowline will start to undo itself as quickly as it’s tied. Most of the knots meant for rope don’t work with bungee cord. I’ve never liked the metal hooks because they often snag things, and the plastic balls sometimes get loose and whip around like a monkey’s fist on a heaving line. The stretch of the cord itself might accommodate the length required for a particular job, though if the bungee is on the short side, the extra tension makes it hard to work with, and if it’s too long, making extra wraps to take up the slack takes time, often when there’s good reason for haste.
The Angler’s Loop (horizontal cords) and the Zeppelin Bend (vertical cord) will hold in bungee cord without coming undone or jamming.īungee cord is very useful stuff aboard a boat, but the precut bungees, fitted with metal hooks or plastic balls on the ends, are not always well suited to the applications I have in mind.
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