Water or beer?

Even though it seems to be a frequent topic here, today’s Blog post’s title is not referring (directly) to beverages. Instead I am writing about the knots of the same names.

Yesterday’s shopping netted us a bunch of webbing, both flat and tubular. This is pretty strong stuff and is often tied together to form loops, or slings. The knot for making these connections that most people know about, or at least the one that I was familiar with, is called a water knot. It is made by tying an overhand knot in one side of the webbing and then tracing that knot back through with the other end.

Webbing tied together with a Water Knot

The beer knot was only just introduced to us when we went tree climbing with our arborist friend Cary. The image below shows how it’s tied, as does the video at the bottom of the post.

Here is how Wikipedia compares the two knots:

Compared to the water knot, it (the beer knot) has the advantages of a higher strength, smaller profile, and a cleaner appearance due to the lack of free-hanging tails. However, the beer knot can be more difficult to tie than the water knot, and one of the tails is hidden from view, making safety checks for adequate tail length more difficult. Testing by PMI in 1995 showed that the beer knot preserves about to 80% of the strength of the webbing.