Wednesday, April 13, 2016
Knot of the Week Video: Create a Field Expedient Rope Ladder with the Ladder Lashing
ITS Tactical: In today’s Knot of the Week, we’ll be continuing our lashings with the Ladder Lashing. A few different techniques exist for tying a Ladder Lashing, but the way I’ll demonstrate here is a field expedient way you can use to quickly create a rope ladder.
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2 comments:
Interesting stuff, and definitely potentially useful in a survivalist situation where you don’t have access to purchasing a ladder, or a rope ladder, but unless I’m super desperate to get somewhere that neither the genie lifts nor the stock of ladders will get me, I likely won’t ever need to use this technique of creating a rope ladder. It seems to me that the timber hitch was the most useful piece of information in that video for a stagehand, and I’m struggling find a good reason to use that hitch over a clove and two half hitches. Also, an important part of this technique isn’t mentioned in the video, you can only really use it for descending, unless someone has secured the ropes off up high before you start inserting your rungs. I guess it’s great if you need to get down a cliff that you’d want to get back up, but again, this seems to be a less than useful skill in the theatre, but still neat to know as a piece of trivia.
Interesting stuff, but only really helpful if I was, say, building a ladder to a treehouse in my backyard. Not so great for much otherwise, as in a situation where you need to get somewhere quickly maybe it would be better to do something else, rather than hunting down sticks and natural fiber rope, wetting it, waiting for it to dry, etc...A cool looking rope ladder, but even then given the chance (if it didn't need to be easily removed) I would still build a wooden one instead of trying a rope ladder, which inevitably will swing and be very unstable. In a theatrical application, well, just grab a ladder and do the thing instead of making your own.
As Alex mentioned, it's also important to remember that a rope ladder is only useful if you're going down and back up again later: you can't tie it to something unless you're already at the top. In a survival situation, maybe a more useful knot to know would be one that allows you to lash sticks together to build a wooden ladder, that you could put up from the bottom and remove from the top, unlike a rope one that is basically stuck until you climb it again and untie it. All in all, good trivia but not actually that useful for real life.
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