Six knots, and the order to learn them in

Most people know one knot and use it for everything. It's usually a granny knot, and it either slips or welds itself shut. Six knots fix that permanently, because they cover six different jobs: making a loop, stopping a rope end, tying to something, joining two ropes, holding tension you can adjust, and pulling tension tight.

Learn them in that order. Each one builds on the handling you picked up from the last.

Safety first, because rope does hurt people

These are utility knots. They are for tarps, loads, gear, boats, gates and dog leads. They are NOT life-safety knots. Anything that holds a human body off the ground needs rated hardware, inspected rope and proper instruction from a climbing or rope-access instructor. Don't improvise that.

Three rules that matter more than any knot:

• Never stand in line with a rope under tension. If it fails, the end and any hardware attached to it travel fast, in a straight line. Stand to the side.
• Every knot weakens the rope. Assume a meaningful loss of strength at the knot. Size your rope for the job, not for the knot.
• Retire damaged rope. Glazed, fuzzy, flattened or stiff sections are telling you something. Cut them out or bin the rope.

Rope choice matters too. Nylon stretches, which is good for shock loads and bad for anything you want to stay put. Polyester barely stretches and handles sun well. Polypropylene floats and is cheap, but ultraviolet light eats it, so it's the stuff in your shed that snaps a year later. Buy braided polyester in 6mm and 10mm and you'll cover most of life.

Four words you need

Standing part is the long, loaded side of the rope. Working end is the bit in your hand. A bight is a U-shaped bend in the rope where the two sides don't cross. A loop is where they do cross.

That's the whole vocabulary. Every instruction below uses it.

One: the bowline

A fixed loop that won't tighten around whatever it's holding, and unties easily after being loaded hard. This is the knot you use to put a loop in the end of a rope, full stop.

Hold the standing part in your left hand. With your right, make a small loop in the standing part, maybe a hand's width down from the end, with the working end lying on top. Bring the working end up through that small loop from underneath. Take it behind the standing part, right to left. Bring it back down through the small loop, following its own path. Pull the standing part and the loop tightens around itself.

Check it: the working end finishes on the inside of the big loop. If it's on the outside, you've tied a cowboy bowline, which is weaker. Retie it.

Leave a tail at least ten times the rope diameter. A short tail is how bowlines fail. If it's going to get shaken around, a load rolling in a truck bed, a boat, wind on a tarp, finish with a simple overhand knot in the tail against the loop.

Two: the figure eight

A stopper knot. It sits in the end of a rope and stops it pulling back through a hole, a pulley, a grommet or your hand. It's also the base of a very useful loop.

Make a loop. Bring the working end round behind the standing part, then down through the loop. That's it. It looks like an eight lying on its side, and it's bulkier and easier to untie than an overhand knot, which is the whole point.

Now the version worth having: the figure eight on a bight. Fold a bight in the rope, treat that doubled rope as if it were a single strand, and tie exactly the same figure eight. You get a fixed loop anywhere along a rope, not just at the end.

It's more secure than a bowline and much easier to eyeball for correctness. It's also harder to untie after a heavy load. Bowline when you'll want it back, figure eight when you want it certain.

Three: the round turn and two half hitches

For tying a rope to a post, a ring, a rail or a tree. This is the workhorse, and it beats the bowline here for one reason: you can tie it while the rope is already under load.

Pass the working end around the object twice. That's the round turn, and those two wraps take the strain through friction so your hands don't have to. Now bring the working end alongside the standing part and tie a half hitch around it: over, around, through. Tie a second one the same way, in the same direction. Snug them together.

Same direction matters. Two hitches tied the same way lock against each other. Tied opposite ways they slide apart under movement.

Four: the sheet bend

For joining two ropes, especially two ropes of different thickness, where a reef knot would roll and fail.

Make a bight in the thicker rope. Pass the thinner rope's working end up through that bight. Take it around behind both legs of the bight. Then tuck it under itself, where it came out, not under the bight.

Both tails must finish on the same side. If they're on opposite sides you've tied the left-handed version, which slips. If the ropes are very different in diameter, take the thin rope around twice before tucking. That's a double sheet bend and it's noticeably more secure.

Five: the taut-line hitch

An adjustable loop that grips under load and slides when you push it. Guy lines on tents and tarps, washing lines, holding a tarp corner you'll want to re-tension when the rope goes slack in the rain.

Pass the working end around your anchor and bring it back alongside the standing part. Working toward the anchor, wrap the end around the standing part twice, keeping both wraps inside the loop you've formed. Then bring the end past those wraps, away from the anchor, and take one more wrap around the standing part on the outside. Tuck it through and dress it tight.

Push the whole knot along the standing part to adjust. Load it and it bites. If it slips, your wraps aren't snug against each other, or the rope is too stiff and slick for the job.

Six: the trucker's hitch

A tensioning system, not really a knot. It gives you roughly a three-to-one pull, and it's how you get a load properly tight with nothing but rope.

Tie one end off to an anchor with a round turn and two half hitches. Run the rope over the load to the opposite tie-down point. Partway back up the line, make a loop in the standing part, a slipped overhand will do, a directional figure eight is better because it won't jam. Pass the working end through the tie-down point and back up through that loop. Now pull down. Hold the tension with one hand and lock it off with two half hitches around the loaded line, right below the loop.

The warning matters. That three-to-one is real, and it's easy to crush a kayak, bend a roof rail or snap light rope with it. If the load is heavy or the trip is long, ratchet straps are the right tool. Use the trucker's hitch for tarps, kit and moderate loads, and check it after the first twenty minutes of driving. Everything settles.

Getting them into your hands

Five minutes a day for two weeks, with a metre of cord, while you're on the phone or waiting for the kettle. Tie each one ten times. Then tie them with your eyes shut. Then tie them wearing gloves, because that's the condition you'll actually need them in, cold and dark and wet with a tarp flapping.

The tell that you've got it is when you stop thinking about the sequence and start thinking about the job.

One evening a year, take the rope out of the truck and run it through your hands end to end. You'll find the damage before it finds you.