The steeple-jack's instructor

Chapter 14: BOW-LINE

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About This Book

A practical manual that teaches the trade of steeple-jacking, offering step-by-step methods for rigging, climbing, and repairing tall structures such as smokestacks, towers, standpipes, water tanks, church spires, flagstaffs, and poles. It explains how to enter the trade, emphasizes safety and professional conduct, and details rigging techniques both with and without gimblet wires, reguying, tripping, handling decayed or lined stacks, and installing ladders and self-supporting fittings. A substantial section catalogs knots, hitches, bends and their uses. Practical advice on pricing, workmanship, and time management rounds out the handbook as a tradesman’s guide to maintaining and inspecting lofty structures.

BOW-LINE

A more efficient knot than the bow-line knot was never known. This knot is used more than any five knots put together in the Steeple Jack’s work.

The bow-line knot is mostly favored in climbing a flagstaff, when making the stirrup to climb, and in many ways for the smokestack.

In making the bow-line knot follow the illustrations according to numbers. In No. 1 the rope is formed in a bight; pass No. 1 through the bight under then over and then under, as illustrated in No. 2; then over and down through the bight as illustrated in Nos. 3 and 4. Draw tight as illustrated on page 63.

As I said before, the bow-line knot is a very useful knot on the flagpole. By placing the sling around the pole, passing the end through the eye, then make your bow-line knot, leaving the loop for the size of your foot so as to slip your foot in.

How to Tie the Bow-line Knot