I know there are a number of climbers here and at least one Boy Scout, not to mention sailors, and I bet you guys know a lot about knots, so I thought I'd ask.

I have a length of rope that I want to shorten. Both ends are in use. There is not constant tension on the line. I don't care whether it jams or not. I'd rather not have a free loop occur in the shortening knot.

The best I've found so far is to double the middle of the rope and tie an overhand knot, but that fails my last requirement. For now, I've done that and then tied the loop off, but it's rather bulky. I'd rather have something like a sheepshank, but it'll require contant tension (and might need a free end to tie -- not sure about that).

Any ideas?

Double half hitch is what I think it's called. It's been a while. It seems like a granny, but it goes around the rope. I'll see if I can describe it:

- take the slack in your hand, as much as you want
- wrap it around the rope and through its self and tighten
- repeat

That should be it.

I'm an Eagle Scout, but like I said it's been a long while and I wasn't very good at knots

Untie one end, cut the rope and re-tie. Presto.

Bruno

A sheepshank doesn't need a free end to tie - that's one of its positive features.

You're right about the other aspects, though.

(Being a climber and caver doesn't help much - most of the time, I want knots at the ends of the rope, with a nice, free-running middle part. The exceptions being adding knots to handlines - normally overhand loops or alpine butterfly knots, but you said you didn't want a loop).

/me thinks laterally...

Tie any knot that has a loop. Then simply cut the loop open. Or did you want to be able to undo your work?

Can you explain exactly why you don't want a loop? Without cutting the rope, it's impossible to avoid a loop of some sort; if we knew why it is important, there might be a possible compromise.

Just half hitch that loop (From the overhand knot, or even better, the figure-8 knot) onto the rope to keep it from drooping. Same effect as the SS, but way more secure and more difficult to undo after tensioning.

To paraphrase. You have a rope, tied at both ends, but it has slack, which you want to remove some of but also desire that there not be a loose loop that flops around.

Do you have any problem with using an additional item to tie up the loose segment?
Another piece of rope.
Or putting two loops in and adding a bungie in between. (that's lame now that I think about it)

Sounds like a cable managment problem.
How about something like a zip or a twist tie. You could use a single strand of solid conductor house wire.

Bingo, I've seen Velcro cable wraps at the hardware store. Get a bag full and use them to wrap the loose loope of rope against the main strand.

PS. A sheepshank, is that the same as what some call a truckers hitch?

A sheepshank, is that the same as what some call a truckers hitch?

No. The trucker's hitch (lots of neat info on that just discevered site...) is something completely different from a sheepshank.

The sheepshank sounds like what Bitt wants. Add the second half hitch, and it may work for your application, even though it's not under constant tension. At least it seems to work in my test rope.

Okay, this is silly, but the original problem was that I got this scratching thing for the cats that has a rope loop at the top to hang it off of something. It's integrated into the panel. I wanted to hang it off of a doorknob, but it's way too long for that. Obviously, I could just cut and resplice (and the resplicing would actually be pretty simple considering it's a non-braided sisal rope) but I just had this notion that there had to be a permanent sheepshank. I guess there is -- the sheepshank plus a half hitch at each end, which I haven't tried yet -- but the point I was missing is that even a sheepshank is really two knots each holding the end of the additional rope. The rope is pretty thick in comparison to its length, so I was trying to minimize the knots used, especially since I was trying to keep the shortening away from the middle so that I could have a single rope thickness over the doorknob. (A butterfly knot worked really well for that.) Oh, and the wife wanted to avoid a free loop because she thought the cats might end up hanging themselves.

I guess it just became more of a curiosity than something that needed a real practical application.

Ahh. This may be easy. Assuming there is enough rope, I would trim the end off, and back braid a loop at the right length to hang the cat toy.

The attachment shows how.

Wrap it around the doorknob a few times extra?

Apologies for taking this a bit OT but I'd like to know if there's a practical and reasonably humane* way to stop cats ruining soft furnishings.

Until now, and this hasn't been much of a problem because we have deliberately shabby furniture because of the two dogs and the cat and the stress-free life we have in not caring about furnishings. For one reason or another, we are going to replace the settee and chairs with new ones and it'll bug me madly to see the cat clawing his way across the top of the settee.

The dogs, incidentally, just bring mud into the house and we can remove that once it's dry, torn fabric isn't so easy.

* I can't wring his bleedin' neck 'cos he's loved by my son and my partner, what's the answer?

Before I forget; leather isn't an option we can consider.

Apologies for taking this a bit OT but I'd like to know if there's a practical and reasonably humane* way to stop cats ruining soft furnishings.

Use a slip cover?

I dunno... I have two cats, both clawed, and neither of them hurt the furniture, even though it's shabby furniture. They do have a scratching post that they maul, though. When I brought home the scratching post, I carried each cat over to it, took it's front paws in hand, and made scratching motions. They caught on pretty quick. I don't think I've ever had to get after them for scratching the furniture.

Oh, the other thing I do that helps, is to trim their claws every few weeks.

You can buy these translucent sticky tape strips (about 4" wide and 16" long) at a pet store. Cats hate to touch anything sticky, and won't scratch a couch/chair corner that has them on it. I just put them on the corners of my couch that my cat tried to scratch, usually they will have a favorite few corners and ignore the rest (watch them for a few days with their new furniture). They are easily replaced if you take them off, say if you were having a dinner party or something. You dont really notice them unless you are looking. Also, give the cat an alternative. I bought 4 of those cardboard scratch pads with the catnip and put them behind each piece of furniture I caught them clawing at. I clip my cat's nails too, but it just seems to make him want to scratch more.

We have "owned" cats for a grand total of about 8 weeks now, so I'm not an expert on cats, but I do seem to have fixed this problem.

We use a child's water pistol to discourage the cats from doing things we don't want them to do (which basically comes down to scratching furniture/carpets and taking food from the table). I expect some people might object to the water pistol, but it works for us. After a few shots you don't end up squirting them anyway, because as soon as they see you pick it up they realise what might be coming next.

There is an arm of a sofa that one of our cats persists on trying to scratch. We find if we leave a through over that arm she won't try. As soon as we remove the throw she tries to scratch the sofa. We can live with that. She also still scratches the carpet sometimes, we are working on that.

We also have plenty of things for them to scratch. I made a big chunky scratching post (which they rarely use of course) and we also let them scratch all the door mats in the house (big coir and sea grass ones). Max likes the door mats, Cookie must do most of her scratching outside now (some of our trees have lots of scratches on their bark now).

I don't think you understood the situation. The scratching board is a flat panel. the rope is attached to two adjacent corners. Removing the rope from one corner to make a loop would leave the board hanging funny.

I forgot to say that I can't wrap the rope around the doorknob more than one because it quickly becomes bigger than the doorknob, making it nearly impossible to operate.

Hmm... sounds like you might want to try a bunch of overhand knots, using both halfs of the U part of the rope as if it's a single rope (i.e. the U loop end at the top is the end of the "single" piece of rope). Then you end up with something that (horizontally) looks like this: <>X==X==X==X=[scratching board] -- all you have to do is make sure the top <> loop will fit over the door knob.

you could use a series of marlinspike hitches and instead of using a wooden toggle, weave in a larger rope thru several hitches.

Sheepshank would be the best for what you want to do though

if there's a practical and reasonably humane* way to stop cats ruining soft furnishings.


Cats hate the smell of citrus. (If you want to test this, just try peeling an orange with a cat sitting in your lap).

If you want to keep them out of a flowerbed, just place orange peels among the flowers.

Perhaps one of those citrus cleaners sprayed lightly on the areas of concern might do the trick.

tanstaafl.