How to Tie a Flemish Bend

Series Summary

Those of us living amidst the mountains of sky scrapers, fields of concrete, and the rivers of highways can truly appreciate the adventure of camping in the pristine great outdoors. Even though a day or two in the wild may be enough to make us drive to the nearest Holiday Inn, there is a relaxing quality to living simply in the woods and enjoying nature. While it is simpler there are tasks to be done that are unfamiliar to us that make camping not quite as simple as staying at home. Consequently many times the camping experience is more stressful than relaxing. However, preparations can be made and skills improved before “roughing it”. One such skill that is important to master in order to camp successfully is knot and bend tying. A broad base of knot tying knowledge will allow you to secure tent poles, carry bottles, and secure tarps and tents to stakes and trees.

In this free video series learn how to tie rope bends from knot tying expert and outdoor enthusiast Robert Segundo. Robert will demonstrate how to tie a Flemish bend, harness bend, strop bend, as well as how to tie a Zeppelin bend; how to tie a simple Simon double bend; how to tie a bowline bend and many others you probably have never heard of before but just might need in a pinch.

Video Transcript

"Now a Flemish Bend is a bend. A bend differs from a knot because it is a way of tying two ropes together in a way that you can untie them. Now with a Flemish Bend old seamen really didn't like it very too much because back in the old days it was mostly fibers or vegetable cord it was really hard to untie a Flemish bend because it had a way of tightening the knots together and binding them in such way that the rope was useless. In those days rope was very expensive and something to be used and prized. Here we have our nice new rope which is not going to bind quite as much because this is because this is all synthetic polyester. I am going to start with a simple bend. To begin with we are going to twist this end under and actually create a second loop into a figure 8 almost and then we are going to take this working end here and place it right into the first loop we made. There we go a nice start to a Flemish Bend. Now what you are going to do with your second rope is to follow it through the same way. Just back end and bring it around, fold it back all the way through, make sure this under piece comes back around and grabs both of these knots and comes back through and as you pull these together this creates a nice way of putting two ropes together. No matter how much tension you put on this you should be able to untie this especially since it is polyester cord and not natural fiber cord this would be very easy to untie."