Sailing Soft Shackles - Diamond Knot vs Button Knot

We are going to test soft shackles and these are diamond knots where the bunny ears come out but David here cut them off. So and what size is this? This is a two millimeter Dyneema that I make little soft shackles out of. And this is three millimeter? Eighth inch. Eighth inch freedom units. So stay tuned and we will break test these and dive into some of the details. Hi I'm Ryan Jinks and this is David Liebenberg and he sails. You sail a lot. A lot a lot. Yeah okay as a highliner I'm excited about this because most of the stuff in our sport stole the technology from sailing including soft shackles. And as a guy who loves soft shackles way too much I've never actually used or tested on this channel diamond knots. We have tested button knots. They're all going to be in the descriptions. Our soft shackle playlist. Lots and lots of stuff but we're going to do a lot more because a lot of people have requested things. So what is your concern with this soft shackle? A few things. One making sure the tails don't actually get sucked through the knot and have the knot fall apart. Yeah. I pre-tensioned these with my hand. I didn't use a hydraulic or a winch. Just like this? Just like that. And then cut off the tail? And then cut off the tails about a half inch of tail off and then burn the rest down. Okay. And sort of made a cap with the melted Dyneema. Yeah I didn't even know you could melt it enough to do that. We just put out a sharpie video with Brent Roth and he did super glue on top and kind of left his bunny ears up. But I like this look if it doesn't, you know, suck the tails through the whole thing falls apart. So the theoretical strength of this from our highline research which is so extensive is you get about 178 percent. So precise. 178 percent of the strength of a diamond knot. Whereas a button knot takes those two tails and puts them back down. And then you splice that tail through the body of this. Which makes the throat that this noose is going around twice as big. And that bend radius is where they it breaks. And so you actually get less strength. But if you look here you have two cords going around twice. That's should in theory be four times the strength of the actual one cord times 50 percent less because you used it. That's how ropes are. But everything comes down to that single point. And that is where I think it's going to break. And this episode would be rad if the tail is pulled through. And we can tie a few others where I don't don't set them in quite as much and set them in more and see if that makes any difference. So after we test these we'll possibly, if you see in the timestamps below, show you how to tie this so we don't leave you hanging. Let's break some stuff. Let's break some stuff. Oh that's so interesting. One of my tails pulled through. Oh snap. Right? I don't know. Hold on. Wait. Let's back it off. Oh no no it was at the noose. Okay. Wait what did happen? I think I think I broke. We either popped through or it broke in the knot because my melted dyneema is still there. So this is the noose. The noose is still intact. Oh snap. Literally. Wow this this is really hard to test tiny stuff. Let's see if you're not your next one. So what was the force? 7.5 kilonewtons or almost you know like 1800 pounds ish. So what's it rated for? 890 pounds. We're having way too much fun over here nerding out on this. What do you think about splicing just straight in line to see what the actual breaking strength of this is? Like an eye splice. Just an eye to eye splice. Yep. And then we'll we'll finish breaking these other two. Find out if the knots pull through and then find out what the actual strength is and see how close it is to see if we're actually because we don't know if 7.5 is good. I don't know. It's really scary to stand next to it. Yep this one broke at the noose. This came undone. Three different ways to break. I've never seen soft shackles break this many different ways. Wow. And the noose is pulled in on itself and it it's all scrunched up on itself right there as well. Wow. Yeah I mean six six and a half to seven and a half really is I don't know but it's all relative to the strength of what you're doing right there. Yeah exactly. I guess another question is what would a button knot look like in this? Oh do we go down the rabbit trails? Before we break eye to eye where do you think it's gonna break? Either right here which is where the end of the taper is. Okay. Or right there on this side because the loop is it's less less parallel just like a climbing anchor. Okay that was not too bad. It broke in the middle. 3.6 kilonewtons. Hey it broke. On the small set yeah. Do some math in your head. We got six and a half to seven and a half and it breaks straight three and a half. So 50 percent twice as strong. 50 percent and four strands times 50 percent. That's pretty much what it came out to. 3.95 kilonewtons is the stated MBS if we're reading that label correctly and we've got 3.6. So anytime you use anything you're gonna get less. It makes it weaker. But splicing the 12 braid stuff the hollow braid stuff that that all this is based off of is supposed to retain what 90 percent? 90 percent when you taper. When you do it right yeah when you do it right. So let's go back to do the one more test. You want to test it with the tails not snipped too low because two of our tests were a failure because the the knot fell apart. The knot fell apart. I've set these in by hand very similar but we'll just leave the tails as is. We'll put a mark on these things so we know how much they get sucked in because you only pull this by your by your hands. What? 5.05? And what happened? It still has load on it. Well yeah I guess it does. Here watch out. Oh no it doesn't. Okay that's the news. That used you know used to be the news. So it broke in the knot this time. Okay. That's part of the that's one part of the knot. This must be multiple pieces of rope. No that's one. Did your knot come undone? Yes but it also broke in the knot. Oh once it broke it come on came undone. But I don't see where the knot was tied in this piece because it looks. Here's the this black mark was one inch above the diamond knot. This is really hard on these small samples. So this this rope straightened out and I think the knot slid off of this because this is very stiff. This was loaded. I think. The entire way of the tail. And it's probably because it's getting pulled through a bend like the way this pinched it. It just. Yeah I did that because uh once one side comes undone the whole thing falls apart. Yeah it broke there and then it's. The knot is very dependent on both sides being there. And that is. Wow but the variation in its samples are are a lot. 5 to 7.5 that's a lot. It's a huge difference. Yeah. For the same knot. I'm going to show you how to tie a diamond knot. And then we'll test it one more time. And then we'll test it one more time. All right here we go. So making the noose right now. Getting through the middle of the rope. So we have our noose. The knot about there. A twist. Come up. Tail goes through that loop. You end up with a little swirly thing in the middle. So halfway through tying the knot. That's what your knot should look like. And then each tail goes around a leg. And up through the middle. Same thing with this tail around that leg. And up through the middle. And then there's a little bit of dressing left. Wow that is easier than the button knot. But I'm sure I would even have to watch this video 10 times before I could do that. And give yourself shackle. Cool. All right. So several ways to set the knot is to take you know these tails or even put a winch on a knot you set here and you pull it. Things we've done in our Highline communities we put it like in a smaller quick link than it fits and then we'll pull that. But I have actually found if you just do it normal and it ends up pulling all four strands. So instead of using a quick link to pull that you basically just do this. And it does the same thing. I don't really feel like this this side's necessary. So what we're going to do is test it my way. And one of these strands is tighter than the other. And I think that's going to self-adjust when the knot adjusts and you end up getting this perfect noose. So I'm going to take it up to one kilonewton. Relax it. Two. Relax and break. Okay pre-tension is done. Let's go. Oh wow. So it rolled. I could see the noose kind of roll over the top and then break. It's alive. That's the noose. So I think it broke at the knot again. Yep. The noose rolled on itself. I wonder if this is just because it's such a small diameter or if it's part of how the diamond knot happens. I don't know. Let's try three mil. All right. Test number one of the eighth inch. So that's dramatically different. I smell it. Don't look at the dyno. How much force do you think that was? Because we were getting five, six, and seven on the two mil. 15? 18? 21. 21. That broke like normal. That's a good thing. And that's amazing because your tails you have like don't exist. Yeah. They didn't pull through. They're just melted on top. Create a little hard cap to try to keep them from getting sucked into the knot. All right detective. What happened to this guy? Ah it was your knot. Broke at the knot. And the noose is somewhere there. That's still warm. Yep. Yeah it gets pretty warm. There's some strands that are broken at the noose. Huh. But it broke at the knot. Would you like to know why you should lock your carabiners? This is supposed to be attached to this side but because we're you know wanting to go get some tacos this opened. At least this is a little bit more identifiable. Yeah. I think it's breaking right where I'm melting. Right where the end of the dyneema is melting. There's little. You're actually getting less height because you're compromising the top essentially. Yeah dyneema yeah. But you were saying why you like this method? Yeah it's a little hard to to show now but basically it's a smoother knot so it's easier to put the noose over the top of because sometimes when we're sailing obviously on the water and you can be upside down it can be dark not easy to do sometimes this is getting pulled really tight so you want as little noose open as possible and it to be able to slide right on and you don't want a big long tail sticking out that you have to pass through as one one more step in the process. Makes sense. I should introduce you to button knots. Probably. I'm gonna just keep plugging those. Like the video if you get the reference guys. All right for you guys we're gonna find out what straight in line is. Oh that sounds so strong. Yeah this is a fun fact there's always one strand out of the 12 that stays or is that two strands um that doesn't break but then if I push the button it just comes apart. The soft shackles were 21. 21, 22? Yeah. And this was 12 so half or double depends how you look at it. All right that's it. I want tacos. So what we're gonna do is we're I'm actually really curious if button knots would perform better and this would be the time to test them so we're going to just tie them while we're eating tacos and then and then break test them see in a few minutes. Those were some yummy tacos. We have a button knot the kind you always see on this channel and now we are going to test this. Uh this you said was eighth inch? Eighth inch. So uh freedom units a little bit bigger than three mil and then we'll do the small one depending how this goes. And going. There is a chance we tied that wrong. Okay so apparently you have to tie your soft shackles correctly because that's not very strong. Wow well that is a question that we've been asked many times on this channel. Okay in my defense I cheated on myself and used animated knots to tie the button knot but then we went to this video right here and got it right this time. So let's test this new and improved correctly tied button knot. Shit that was tight right? My button knot has been redeemed. I was like wait his diamond knot's not stronger than my button knot. Yeah look how hard that head gets. It's just rock rock hard. 27.7 kilonewtons. I think we were getting So basically if you just watch that video we made uh Matt Stolling tying the button knot then you can get a much better soft shackle with the top not having tails. Are you a believer? I don't know how to tie a button knot. They're not shitting on the diamond knot I'm just saying. Two mil? Should we do the two mil? Let's do the two mil. Yeah let's do it. Two mil button knot. Where's it at? We'll never find a gray soft shackle down there. Nah it's got to be around here somewhere. What do we think of the result? 9.4. I don't even remember what we were getting. Five six seven. Five to seven yeah. Oh is that 20 percent stronger than yours? Oh I'm so sorry to hear that. Oh man. Want to see soft loops embedded into a boat? Oh I guess you're gonna have to subscribe because that's the next thing we're gonna film. Thanks for watching. Click the thing that looks like this. Cheers.