finial wall and crown knot

Treat about 1-1/2" of the end of your sennit lines
with some superglue (fast drying) and clip off the
dried tip at a 45 degree angle. This will make
passing the tucks much easier. You can also
wrap the ends tightly in scotch tape and clip the
ends, but this will come apart rather quickly. It
should last long enough to finish this up, though.

                     Now............

To end off any four-strand sennit, simply make
one more loose pass with the four strands
forming a crown knot as shown...

Then turn the work OVER and do another crown
around the finished sennit.. Be sure you are
going in the same direction as the original crown
or all will be in vain!   This is MUCH easier than
trying to tie a wall knot and produces exactly the
same result, so score one for simplicity!

Here we see the lightly-tightened up wall and
crown knot (or should we say the "crown and
crown" knot?) (I need some Seagram's Seven
Crown!) ready for the next passes.

Tighten this up very loosely as shown... you need
to make some more passes and tightening this
up hard now will make that impossible.

That completes the wall and crown knot, but now
to double it up.   Take any of the four legs and
tuck it through the knot as shown (open the
larger picture for some lettered indicators), being
careful to keep the tucking line above the
standing line... look carefully at this and the next
pic for proper line location... The tucking line will
go over and under as shown for all four legs...

"Above" in this case means closest to the top of
the knot. Bring the tucking parts thru, each in
turn, until you have it looking like...

               THIS.                                ('nother view)

Note how the second tucks form another crown
knot, but inside the first crown.... this is the basis
for the footrope knot, the manrope knot and
many other "stopper" knots in three or four
strand rope. Once those are tied, the strands are
then re-laid up into rope until the next knot
location is encountered.    While footrope knots
can be "triple passed" , they are usually "double
passed" as in this example: the principle is the
same in either case.

But I digress.

The truly tricky part here (and the only tricky part)
is the next pass. Take any end and go over the
next two lines and then into the center of the
knot, up and thru the middle of the knot as
shown. (the black line just shows that this is the
same line exiting and entering the picture... I'm a
flippin' knottyer, not a photographer. If I was a
good photographer, I'd have some money!)

Here's another view of the line going over two,
into the knot and then up thru the knot, exiting in
the middle.

Here we see all four lines passed thru the knot
and exiting from the middle of the knot end.   You
may start to tighten up the knot at this point, but
DON'T just go pulling on the lines and expect it to
work! Put a gentle strain of the four lines and roll
the knot between your thumb and forefinger, like
you were trying to coax the meat out of grape.
The knot will tighten itself up slowly. If you have
a lot of slack, then just follow the lines around as
they were laid in and tighten things up gradually.

Here all four lines are passed thru, the knot is
"faired" (tightened) up and I've clipped the first
line FLUSH with the end of the knot.

You can use a sharp pair of electrical (small)
diagonal cutters to do this, but I use a cuticle
nipper I get from Rite Aid... it gives a superior flat
cut and can easily be resharpened on a small
stone as needed.

Snip the lines off FLUSH with the end of the knot.

Once that's done, roll the knot between your
fingers again and the end of the knot will close
over the cut ends, pretty much hiding them inside
the ball end.   Here's two views of the rolled knot.

Note that I used cotton line for this demo... it has
a good coefficient of friction and will stay closed
up and solid under most circumstances, but if
you're using a soft cord (like nylon 550 or
paracord, especially with the core lines removed)
then you will probably want to put a drop of
superglue on the finished knot. If you're doing
one or two, just get one of those $ .99 tubelets
from the hardware store, but if you are making a
lot of these, go here to get bulk suppies of
cyanoacrylate.   As I go thru about two miles of
line a month, buying this stuff at a hardware store
would bankrupt me in four minutes. ALWAYS get
the "THIN" or "QUICK SETTING" type of this and
A L W A Y S work over a piece of cardboard or
an old thick towel to prevent drips on the floor or
carpet! It does NOT want to come off once
you've dripped it onto Mom's rug! Bummer!

And so we come to the end of your little visit.

Here's the dutchman I made with the finished
knoton the end. Under almost any circumstance,
this will last the life of the
sennit/lanyard/whatever without any gluing (in
cotton or other rough line) or with a drop of glue
in the centre of the knot (for smoother
cords/550/paracord).

Enjoy and let me know if there's something I
missed or if this can be made any more
understandable.

Oh, yeah. I recommend you make up a small
sennit dutchman and make the end knot, take it
apart, remake it and do this at LEAST five or six
times in a row, just to get the feel for it. I am a big
proponent of the principle that "Parktize makes
Prefect", as efidenced by my tiping and speling.

Here's a pic of exactly the same knot but done
with seven lines in hard nylon to form the ends of
a knot used on Boatswain's Lanyards.   It just
takes a bit more patience to do it, but it's still
basically norhting more than a wall and crown
doubled.