The Mountaineering Company | Tying Ropes Together for abseiling / rappelling. 

Hello and thanks for your comment. As with any video we aim to show the safest, easiest to understand method to avoid people taking away the wrong information. A single overhand works fine with long tails when both ropes are the same diameter and not wet. In anything but the ideal circumstance the method we have demonstrated is the safest. Lots of different methods for doing this but we don't have time on a video to discuss all the options and drawbacks. We save this for our courses when people join us in the mountains!

Yeah, I've seen that in the "room temperature challenge" tik Tok videos. (I'm just kidding you comment section trolls!)

Personally I always use two overhands. The single overhand works too (with long tails)but emphasis has to be on a well dressed. I prefer two knots as it makes no difference to pulling the ropes down and is a more gold standard approach!

Hi Jurak. I've found from experience that a double fisherman's knot whether used on its own to tie ropes together or with a retraced figure of eight (Flemish bend), is very likely to catch in a crack when pulling the ropes down. I've found an overhand is far less likely to do this which is why we teach using the overhand rather than any other knot. I would never recommend using the flat figure of eight. Whatever knot you use its important to understand the pros and cons and use the right knot for your objective. Hope that answers your questions. Happy climbing! Matt

at that point why keep making more and more complicated knots when you can just do an overhand?

The correct and safe way to use a figure 8 knot for joining ropes to rappel is to fix the core problem, not to throw a double-fisherman's* on as a bandaid. the flemish bend (figure 8 bend) should be correctly performed in this manner rope1LOAD knot rope1TAIL rope2TAIL knot rope2LOAD in this way, the bend/knot is stressed only along its strong axis and will not be at risk of rolling apart. It still has the weakness of not being a flat knot and having a risk of being caught. * - do you mean a double barrel on two ropes? do you have enough tail to perform a double fisherman's?? this is just a bad plan generally

Hello and thanks for the comment. Yes the "dont use this knot ever" is in the context of this video for tying ropes together. Figure of 8 knot is fine for tying onto the rope etc.

Hello and thanks for your comment. A number of tests have been conducted that show two overhands back to back provide an increase from the standard single overhand. A well tied single overhand fails between 3-4kn. Two overhands back to back fail at around 4 - 4.5 kn. You are correct though that a second knot will roll but this is at a much higher force than the single knot. For more details on the pull tests results contact Petzl or DMM