Today’s Knot of the Week is one of my favorites and can be used for a plethora of pioneering projects. With a Tripod Lashing, you can create a structure to suspend a pot for cooking over a fire, create the base for a wash basin, fabricate a drying rack and even utilize this technique to lash together spars to form a raft. While traditionally a raft would be created with a Floor Lashing, a version of the Tripod Lashing can also work.
As with the other lashings we’ve talked about in the past, you’ll want to use a natural fiber rope like Sisal Rope. In this demonstration I’ve used paracord and wooden dowel rods, which doesn’t bite like natural fiber rope will on wood like cedar. Natural fiber rope will hold even better if it’s soaked in water prior to lashing.
Tripod Lashing » Lashings
(Strength: 5/Secure: 4/Stability: 4/Difficulty: 3) See below for what these ratings mean.
Ratings
Strength/Security/Stability/Difficulty
Each knot will be assigned a rating from 1-5 (1 representing the lowest score) based on the following four properties:
Strength – All knots will weaken the strength of a rope, however, there are knots that are stronger than others. The scale here will reflect how strong the rope remains with the specified knot.
Security – The security scale refers to how well the knot will stay tied, and resist coming loose under a normal load.
Stability – Stability refers to how easily the knot will come untied under an abnormal load (i.e. the knot being pulled in a direction it was not intended to) A lower score here represents instability.
Difficulty – The lower the number, the easier a knot is to tie.