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Comment by alister | Hacker News Reader

I have a knot problem that I think pretty much everyone has encountered. How do you tie a bundle of branches or a cardboard box or something compressible as tightly as possible? The first way everyone tries is to cross the rope like you would for shoelaces, then putting pressure on the crossed rope with your finger, and trying to cross the ends of the rope with your one free hand to finish the knot. Inevitably the knot is way too loose. Surely there must be a better way?

EDIT: the word "ratcheting" nicely conveys the idea I was looking for.

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I second the suggestion of a trucker's hitch. A ratcheting knot can be useful in this situation, but IMO what you're really after is a mechanical advantage. The trucker's hitch gives you a mechanical advantage by using a loop in the rope as a pulley. There are a number of ways to make the loop and it doesn't really matter which one you use. This video gives a pretty nice explanation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raTYwsfnsXg

Once you cinch the load down using your mechanical advantage, you can use any number of knots (ratcheting or not) to secure it.

I also love the truckers' hitch. The key benefit is the tautline hitch that makes it easy to tighten. But sometimes I use an alpine butterfly loop and tautline hitch. I think that it's stronger.

Whoa, I had no idea the trucker's hitch was a real knot; I thought it was an Ylvis joke.

I would have said the trucker's hitch, but there are other "ratcheting" knots that would work well in this scenario.

https://goneoutdoors.com/rope-knots-give-ratcheting-effects-...

The knot your looking for is the gleipnir knot:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxxhg-tf8Ug

It’s a recently invented knot that works extremely well for bundling irregular objects

The standard ratcheting knot is the rolling hitch, although several people on this thread mentioned potentially better knots for this application. My general trick is to use rolling hitches together with the bow-and-arrow technique. The concept behind bow-and-arrow is simple -- if you pull on a segment of rope perpendicular to the rope, it gets tighter.

If I'm tying something to my roof rack, I'll get is as tight as I can going around a few times with a rolling hitch. Then I'll get a piece of rope to pull on that one. How you do that depends on domain.

I would use a trucker's hitch, personally.

Instructions: https://www.animatedknots.com/truckers-hitch-knot

Unrelated music video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUHgGK-tImY

A constrictor knot like a boa knot.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boa_knot

I am sure the other knots people are posting work well, but most people will never remember them. I suggest a surgeon's knot. It does the job well enough and is simple enough that anyone can use it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surgeons_knot

I think what you're looking for is a constrictor-type knot. There are a few options here: https://www.animatedknots.com/?s=constrictor

If you tie an alpine butterfly somewhere in the rope, and then pass the other end through it, you can achieve a 2:1 pulley system in the rope. This greatly increases the compression of the lashing. Hard to explain, but you're basically using a fixed loop in the line as a pulley to increase the force applied.

You can do the same thing going around twice. It's simpler, and gives the same mechanical advantage.

Much more friction and stretch in the system. The less rope, the less stretch.

maybe Cabestan (reinforced with a few more loops) or hangman's knot

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