Thanks for your help.
Unfortunately, my understanding of tying knots is limited to tying my
shoelaces

I'm not sure whether my description was good enough, and I have sort of the
same problem you did. I'm not sure I understand your instructions. I have
posted an image on the Internet so you can see what I'm having trouble
expressing. This is the way I'd like to do it. You can see the picture he
http://www.members.optusnet.com.au/thepowells/swing.gif

I hope that clears it up. If you would be so kind as to reply again,
explaining as if to a 6 year old how to do it, I would be grateful.

Thanks

Geoff

----- Original Message -----
From: "Karl Pollak"
Newsgroups: rec.crafts.knots
Sent: Thursday, September 09, 2004 4:32 AM
Subject: how to join two ends to one?


x-no-archive: yes
"djaef" wrote:

Hi,
I'm making a swing for my kids in the backyard. Trouble is, I didn't buy
enough rope the first time, and so had to buy a second lot and figure out
how to join them. I need a knot to join two ends of one rope (going
through
the tyre) to each end of the rope going around the tree. (I'm going to cut
the second rope in half and put each one through one side of the tyre,
under
it and back up through, in a triangle shape, so that two ends of it come
back up to join the original rope) Can anyone help me?

I'm not sure if got your problem quite right but the way I would do this
would be to take two pieces of rope and affix all of their ends to the
tire. That will give you 4 points on which the tire will hang. then it is
a simple matter of dropping another rope from the tree limb and making a
loop on its lower end around the ropes fixed to the tire.

If that looks too flimsy to you, you can gather up the tire ropes in the
middle and seize them to make a loop at their summit, or make an overhand
(or figure 8) knot in the middle to create a loop that way. Then you
would
either just thread the rope hanging form the tree through that loop or
make
a lop on its lower end as mentioned above to connect the two parts of the
set up.

The first method will be prone to spill the tires and have the kids fall
off the swing. That may be an attraction to older kids but not
recommended
for small children as they could get hurt that way.

Use your own judgment.

In case I have misunderstood your question, you can join two ropes by
splicing them, long splice recommended, or by putting bowlines on each end
(intertwined). There are other ways of doing it, but these would appear
to
be the simplest and most reliable.


--
Karl Pollak, Richmond, British Columbia
Sea Scouting in Canada at http://www.seascouts.ca/