Essential Knots: Bushcraft & Tarp Setups

Description

In this video I show you the most common knots that I use when stringing up a tarp or shelter and when out in the woods camping or practicing bushcraft.

Knots cam mean a quick setup and take down especially if the weather turns and you need shelter fast. I have been out on many occasions were the rain or wind has come in strong and tying a tarp up fast and securely keeps you from exposure.

Thanks for watching.

Tarp Setup - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THckcO7A9ng

Hammock Setup - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cc6jprsKYmQ

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Video Transcription

hi there guys is Mike's memsahib bushcraft here and welcome to another video if you're getting interested in bushcraft skills we were just spending more time outdoors doing things like camping and exploring the wilderness then not something you're going to come across whether you're using natural materials or man-made knots are essential and they'll make putting up and taking down things very very quick and easy if you know the right knots to use so in this video I'm going to show you all the knots that I use and I've also brought along with me a large tarpaulin something I use for group shelters and I can show you those knots in context some terminology to understand first is that when the cord is looped over on itself like this that's called a loop and when you put the call together like this so you don't actually cross the cord over but it just forms a u-shape that's called a Bight loops and bites are used pretty frequently in time not so it is important to be able to distinguish between them but the first knot I'm going to show you is a really simple one you'll see it used on a lot of equipment that I carry and it's one that a lot of people have been saying for years even though they may not know the name of it I've got some 550 paracord here and this first knot is called the overhand knot we just create a loop like this and we feed the tail end of the called back through itself like that and it creates a very simple knot but very effective one also you can even tie two pieces of called together with the overhand knot you can just double them up like this create a loop take the tail end pass it back through the loop and they have not just there but the type of cordage you use is important this paracord is very grippy and if I pull it apart like that it doesn't come undone but it's not the best not to use for tying two pieces of call together if they're being drawn in opposite directions like that if they're being drawn down like this then it's very effective and it will cause the knot to tighten I'll use it for my next knife and you

can see that I've actually put a bead just behind the knot so what happens is when the cords pulled apart it's drawn downward in a linear direction through the bead causing the knots to tighten and you'll see it used again in the same context in my Ferro rod where it's being drawn through a leather toggle and it can't come undone that way another knot that I use very frequently is the clove hitch and the clove hitches are really useful knot there are two ways of tying it really one way of tying a clove hitch is by creating two loops by going right over left just like that right over left again so you've got two loops just there and then you go right under left and then you can put it over the top of a peg for example like that and pull on it and it's a self tightening knot so no matter how much pressure I apply it will not come undone another way in which you can tie a clove hitch is by running the piece of cord over the piece of woods like this or whatever you're tying it to going over the top of it to cross over like that when you come back round the other side you take the tail end of the piece of cord and you go in between the crossover like this and that creates the clove hitch that way as well and this means that you can attach it to anything regardless of whether you can get the loop over the top of it or not to loosen the knot you just go in the opposite direction of the other piece of cord and the whole thing will just come off like that let's say you're stringing up a tarpaulin you've got a Ridgeline and you're trying to go over to a tree and the ridge line isn't long enough and you don't want to change location but you've got some more cord in your pocket you can extend the ridgeline and get to the tree you want to get to you need to tie those two pieces of called together and there's a very simple knots of that it's knots called a reef knot you just go right over left like that so you're crossing over right under left just like that

and now this becomes the left hand piece of cord so you go left over right and left under right just like that and when you tie this down or pull on it it will constrict and bite on the two tail ends and it will not come apart another knot I'm going to show you is the half hitch and the half hitch is almost exactly the same as the overhand knot except you're tying it around something instead of just allowing it to constrict on itself but it's a useful knot for tying things off and when you're putting up shelters or tarpaulins you might need to tie an area off and the half hitch can come in handy just giving you that extra bit of security if you're there for long periods of time half hitches are really simple not we just have the cord going over whatever we're tying it to we come back over the top of the mainline there with the tail end of the cord go through itself much like an overhand knot and that is a half hitch not particularly strong not on its own but if you do two half hitches it will generally bite very well and be useful for securing things down or just tying things off if we pull on that it'll just constrict on itself it'll bite the tail end and it won't come undone another way of tying the second part of that instead of putting the tail end through we just put a bite through of course and it creates a loop for us like that and I've haven't got a lot of cords play with here so it looks a bit fiddly if you've got a long piece of rope that's very easy but if we pull on that now it bites very well and something I do every now and then as I use toggles and you can secure things off with toggles quite frequently and they just stop things pulling back through themselves but that will be incredibly strong and then when we no longer need it we just pull out the toggle pull the loop it all comes undone very easily but these are just some basic knots I've shown you and what we're actually going to do now is get this tarp strung up and I'm going to show you a lot of different knots that I use for stringing up tarps obviously show you how some of these knots I've shown you can come into play with a tarpaulin

both in this bag here the tasks in the ridge line will be available straightaway because of the way it's packed in if you're interested in that have a look at the video in the description but I'm going to string this task up quite low so I can show you the not close up but I take this out here I have a loop on the end of this ridge line just here and you can see that this is an overhand knot two pieces of called tied together as we demonstrated earlier to form a loop tie your first knot it's very simple you just take some slack so we have the ridge line here and this is the tail end with the loop on we go over the top you just make sure you've got a nice amount of slack there you come round like so obviously the bigger the tree the more slack you will need so pick a sensible tree and we created a loop by going back round there and we had a loop on the end of our ridge line we go through and then you take a stick off the floor and that creates our first knot and if you really want to tighten it then you pull on it you go back pull on it go back again and that's why I always named it the ratchet not I've not really seen it used anywhere but it's just something I improvise I'm sure it exists somewhere and the nice thing about it is when you're finished you just take the toggle out and it all just comes apart really really easily and falls to pieces so now that questions of a tree you hang your calls correctly it should just unravel like this and this then brings you to the second tree you're tying your ridgeline to where you're going to tie a quick release knot the size it's not you want to keep some tension in the ridge line especially if you've got a large heavy tarpaulin so the friction of the cord on the actual tree will help you quite a lot but you come round the tree and feed this through to get some tension on the line and then we come back over flat ground again

and what that does is it really gives us a bit of tension on the line there and then decide a quick release knot we come round like this with our two fingers we twist one towards the tree and then we grab the tail end and we pull like that and that is basically a quick release knot so it's a very strong knot it will not come undone this ridge line is very taut thanks to wrapping background and creating these two knots you've got a really good ridge line even with a heavy tarpaulin like that but there are ways of securing this even though it won't come undone if you're out here for quite some time you might want to add some extra security here in simple ways of doing it is to be putting a toggle in the loop and that way it will never loosen and then elese them very slightly with weather but the knots won't loosen so much and then if you want this to all come apart you just take the actual toggle eggs and pull the loop and it will come apart another way of doing it is if you remember the half hitch we tied we can just tie a half hitch like that and that will strengthen the knot no end and it will not come undone at all and we want to loosen it we just feed that back through and if you obviously pull this the whole thing comes apart and then we're ready to take down again so it's a very effective not for putting up and taking down now our tarts hanging like this it's already pre connected to the ridge line I always have my starts like that we can just take off the bag here start comes in push and start spreading it out along the ridge line and we've got some interesting knots on the ends here at the start and this is called a prusik knot and press igniters are very very useful knot it's a friction not so when you pull this way knot tightens and it won't allow it to move but when you take the slack off the knot you can move it along like that and it generally doesn't wear into cord it's used for climbing as well it's a really good knot and it works very effectively when you have a thinner called

on a thicker cord if you have thick cord on thick cords for the same type of cord it generally won't grip as well it will get this spread out and I'll show you how to do a prusik not what I'll do first of all is cut this loop just here so I can show you how to do it from the start so I normally tie the tarpaulin to the ridge line using a plastic not I have a piece of cord Bank this long I double its over I do an overhand knot did that right at the beginning it creates a nice little loop for us like that the loop goes over the top of the ridge line and then the back part of the loop with the knot comes through and then it wraps around again making sure all the pieces of cord aspect very neatly within themselves and then it goes back through the loop again and then you pull very tightly like so and that is a press ik not it's a very basic Rasik knot and you can actually alter them quite drastically you can wrap around quite a few times create even more loops but what you'll notice is it doesn't feel very tight and it slides up and down the ridgeline but when you apply pressure it will grip substantially and it will not move the same way can go either way it will not move for you but when you need to move it it will be really easy to slide around very useful not to loosen it though it's really simple you just grab the loop and pull and the whole lot comes undone so we have a little tab here on our tarpaulin we have the prusik knot how do we attach it it's quite simple

normally a lot of the time I just pull the tabs through the plastic not like that and I'll just get a toggle usually a healthy a bit of words compared to this one and that will keep very tight even in this wind so we have the corner tabs of the tarpaulin I normally just do another loop again we talked about the overhand knot we just take the loop we thread it through like so and then we take hanged up bunch of paracord and we pull it back through the loops now this is why you want to make the loop quite large because there are your faffing around pulling a big Hank that piece of cord through you just make sure the loop goes over the end of the knot just like that you can also use a toggle like we used over there it's put a toggle through but it has more chance of coming undone if you pack your tarp away like me I just have everything hanged up like that it's all get stuff sack in there and then the ridge line gets hanged up and stuffed into the top so it's just ready to go again next time you need it but we can walk this out now and tie it off somewhere so we just walk this out over here we've got a nice free string and this knot will allow us to adjust the tension of these lines if they slack and over time and that is a useful knot and it's called a tensioning hitch knot we keep the line a little bit slack at first we don't want it really tight bring this round this is the tail end of the line we go over the top like that and then underneath like so around again want one more time and then we take the tail end we go underneath this back part here and then what we can do to make this knot more efficient is actually instead of just putting the whole tail end through we just put a bite through and then tighten the knot up so now we can just take the slack of the line up like that and that's looking good and it can be adjusted in the future which is nice and it works it will grip quite nicely for you and when you're happy of how it looks we just do another half hitch is what I normally do just to secure things off like that you can even do two if you really want to but one is probably sufficient and that should be absolutely

well guys I hope you found this video useful he's just some of the basic knots that I use almost all of them really all the ones I can think of anyway there'll be plenty more out there and that the more you get into outdoor skills the more knots you learn really but I usually always stick to these ones they're the ones that I turn to first and I'm doing various jobs and they're very easy to do and they're very quick to undo as well most of them that's really the key was not I'm not saying that you need to learn these knots and they're the best knots for you these are just the knots as I use and the more time you spend outdoors the more you'll adopt your own techniques your own knots and you'll you'll really kind of get into the grooves of your own methods out here when you're doing things but you may be asking how you hang up calls that's one thing I haven't shown you you take a piece of cord like this you pinch it between your thumb and your index finger like that and you go over the ball of your thumb like that between your two N fingers there and then back over your thumb again you can then part your hands because you're biting down on the tail end of that piece of cord and you can just keep doing this and really when you get to about a meter or so length of cord there you can bite this and take it off like that and start wrapping round and going back on itself and then you can come back like this as well it doesn't really matter how meters if I'm honest when you're doing it for things like tarps and stuff if you were climbing it's a little bit different but then you end up with a nice hank of cord like that and when you tie this to a tree it can all be pulled and unravel like so and it will just keep feeding out of its ass like that it's a really efficient way of Hank and cord and it really goes hand-in-hand with what we've done today which is why I've put it on the end of this video so thanks again for watching guys I hope you liked the video hope it was useful I'll see you very soon for another one take care