| "OVER-TWO" Fender Hitching Vince Brennan, RWG, SOSKA |
| Last updated 2006-12-15 |
| Click on any picture to bring up a larger verzion! |
Over-two refers to the fact that you are making a simple crown hitch but going over two lines instead of over one.... sounds
simple, but there’s a real trick to doing this:
The tricks are
(1) keeping track of the line being tucked and the progression,
(2) tucking the last two lines, and
(3) the method of tightening the hitch to the work.
Now, I can’t tell you how many lines to make up around the work, that’s something you’ll have to figure out for yourself, but the
rule of thumb is dividing the circumference of the work by 2 and adding one line... so IF you have a 6” circumference work
and IF your lines are 1/8” , you’ll wind up with 25 lines (approximately). When it comes to math, I’m all thumbs, so that’s the
method I use. (1/8" line = 8 lines per inch x 6” = 48 / 2 = 24 + 1 = 25. It ain’t pretty, but it DO work.
Figuring the circumference of the work is fairly complex if you use mathematical formulas (lessee: measure the diameter,
then half that for radius, then Pi x R squared, throw away the 6 and put in a stropped block.... ahhhh, the hell with it.) Just
take a piece of butchers twine or heavy white thread and wrap it around the work to be covered three or four times.... hold it
in place and make a pencil mark across the wraps, unwrap it and measure the distance between the marks.... close enough
for Navigation! If you wanna be even closer, measure the distance between ALL the marks and average them out. Works for
me and it don’t strain my brane.
Another tricky part is how LONG to cut the lines you’ll use for the hitching.... This is tricky, and I’ve never really solved it well.
I’m sure there’s a formula (damn formulas again!) for how long in relation to the diameter of the lines used with consideration
for the ends, but I just take a shot and pray. I usually wind up “on the side of the angles and (Angels? Yah, them.) have line left
over, but that’s OK too, and you can use it for puddings for chest beckets and more bellropes and like that, or (if you have
more than a 1 foot piece) strip it out and use the parts for constrictors. If you DON’T allow enough, you may need to stop
halfway thru the hitching and start again with a new set of lines, and use a turkshead to cover the join. On most work you’ll
have a decorative turks somewhere along the length of the work, so that’s no disaster, but I’ll generally allow 4 times the
finished length and a little slop for 4.5 times, and I may add a bit more.
OK: now you’ve got the diameter of the work and the number of lines to use, make them up around the work at one end about
an inch from where you really want the hitching to start .... arrange them more-or-less evenly around the work and then put a
constrictor on ‘em to make ‘em fast. Leave about seven or eight inches hanging loose on the upper end so you’ll have
something to use when you come back to back-hitch. The hitching will (provided you have the correct number of lines
selected) even itself out for you as you go along. You’ll back-hitch the work up to the finish point as a last step and you will
then eliminate any irregularities you may have when starting this off.... trust me, it works.
Keeping track of the lines to be tucked is accomplished by the following trick: use your thumb. Now, right- or left- handed,
the best way to do any hitching job using right-hand -laid line (the most common) is counter-clockwise around the work being
covered: why? because the lay of the lines being used will naturally tighten up if you hitch in that direction and you need all the
help you can get on this baby. Get used to using your left hand to hold the work and the right hand to do the tucks. If you’re
doing this in nylon cord, it doesn’t matter which hand you start with since it has no ‘lay’ to it - just remember that if you work
holding the piece in your right hand, reverse all the following directions.
Start by taking any three adjacent cords and, with your left thumb sticking out, drape them over it... take the first cord (left
side) and lay it up and over the other two and then back under and let your palm hold it against the work temporarily.... now
pick up the next cord is series to the right and lay IT over the thumb (the other two are still there...) so you again have three,
take the first of the three (left side) and do it all over again.... continue crossing two and picking up one until you have only two
cords on your thumb and are back around at the cord that got the first tuck.... now the tricky part.
Take the left cord on your thumb and go over the ‘orphan’ and tuck thru the loop formed by number 1, then take the ‘orphan’
and tuck it down into BOTH the loop 1 and loop 2. Note that you’re still crossing two lines when you do this....
It’ll take you a few tries to get it right (took me MORE than a few before I got it) but once you DO get it, it becomes second
nature.
Now, for tightening up the tucks.... I take the work in left hand (just like you did when you were tucking), and put your left
thumb on the spot where the lines tuck through, grasp a line with your right hand and snug it down, using the left thumb to
hold the line snugged.. take the next line to the LEFT and do it again, and so on, gradually working all the way around and
moving the work a little each time so you're more or less keeping the lines snugged in.... you’ll probably need to do this two or
three times around to get it fairly tight, but just get it fairly tight.... now start the next row and do all the tucks and then the
tugging-in for a snug fit, and by the third pass, you should start to see a pattern emerging, as well as having the lines sitting
fairly snugly after only two passes.
(TIP: When snugging the course down, I take the line I just snugged and stick it under the fingertips of the left hand and keep
adding each new one as I move around to the left.... this tends to hold the pulled lines taut and snugs up the work a little faster,
IMHO.)
Ok: Turn on the stereo or whatever and go to it.... just keep on tucking the circles and then tightening the other way and you
should have a fair amount of work finished in about an hour.
Stop. Look at the work. Is it all even? Did you have a problem with tightening up things? Is there a line sticking out
somewhere that didn't get tucked in?
The mark of a good 'over-two' hitch job is when the pattern forms completely vertical, or along the line of the work. If it has a
spiral right appearance, you have too few lines, if you have a spiral left, too many.
PROBLEMS:
(a) there seems to be a gap in the work when I tighten up everything....
OK: at the next tuck, cut another line to length and add it in to the pattern. If you need to add two, then add them at opposite
sides. If you need to add three, you may have (censored) up the measurements, or perhaps my formulae are suspect., (Well,
why not? I’VE been a suspect before...) so send me an email and let’s commiserate on this.
(b) no mater how hard I try to snug them down, there’s a loose ‘lip’ to the courses when I finally give up, like a shawl collar on
a pretty blonde...
Probably too MANY lines in the hitching... try dropping a few out one per course until you get a snug fit around the work but no
gaps.
(c) I missed a cord on a previous row...
Until you get used to doing this, pull out the row(s) until you get to the one where the offending cord is, then continue the work
from there. IF IT AIN’T RIGHT, GO BACK AND FIX IT AS SOON AS YOU NOTICE IT! Otherwise you’ll have a sloppy job and you will
ALWAYS know that there’s an error right there. You’ll probably decide it needs fixing anyway, so you may as well do it while
the delay is minimal. Again, TRUST ME ON THIS!
(d) my hands are sore after about twenty minutes work....
NOT funny! Your hands WILL hurt, especially if you have landsman’s hands and skin (un-callused) and are unused to
working with small, rough line. All I can tell you is that when your hands start to really hurt, STOP for a day. Whatever you do,
you DON’T want to wear open a raw or bleeding wound on your hands or fingers. (NOT because I like you: I could care less,
but the blood will stain the work and you’ll have to start all over again or splice in to replace the stained section.... When I first
learned to do ropework, I didn’t have the luxury of resting a day and instead soaked my hands in a heavy brine solution (try
THAT on raw skin.... makes a root canal seem like a vacation!) until I started to get my calluses. Now, if I do two squareknot
belts, I can put a cigarette out on the side of my pinky and never feel it, but YOU don’t wanna do that, so take it easy, allow your
hands to get acclimated and if you need to, get a couple pair of those white cotton gloves women use when doing their
lingerie or handling stockings.... they’re thin enough that you can still feel what you're doing, cheap enough that you can wear
‘em out and throw ‘em away easily and white so they don’t dirty up your work. Kevlar sailing gloves ( minus the first joint of
the fingers and thumbs) will also do the trick, but they may leave a residue on the work and they’re HIDEOUSLY expensive. I
do this all day, so I just build up the calluses and ignore the whole thing. YMMV. CAUTION: Nylon cord, especially braided
small “mini-blind” type cord, will eat you alive in nothing flat, going thru a callus as what would resist any type of manila or
cotton ropes like the proverbial “hot knife”....
OK. Assuming that all is going well, you should have just about covered the work in hand and be approaching the end-point.
Keep hitching until you get to one course away from where you want to stop, then take all the lines and constrictor them to
the work, put another constrictor on the lines and then you can trim them off and that end will be ready for covering with a
turkshead or whatever you want to use to hide the end.
Now go back to the starting point and turn the work end-for end. You’ll probably have two or three rows that just don't look as
good as the rest of the work, so pull them out until you get to the ‘good stuff” and then just start tucking again until you get to
one course away from your end point, constrictor and trim as previously and you’re finished.
You CAN end this off with a footrope knot made up of the (however many) strands you used for the hitching, but that’s a
complicated project and quite easy to screw up.... try it if you’d like to. Don’t constrictor the ends: convert from an ‘over-two’
to a simple ‘over one’ crown, do an ‘over-one’ wall beneath it and pass it thru two or three times. It’s a pretty knot but a
bugger to fair up and get looking right.
If you’re going to varnish the hitching, now’s the time to do it, before you put on your turksheads. You want the varnish to
penetrate all the lines in the hitching, and if you apply the turksheads and then varnish, there will be a section of line ends
under the turksheads which will remain unprotected and prone to ‘wicking’ up any water the work may be exposed to.
Promotes rot. Not good.
If any of the above is not clear, or if you think there’s a mistake, go HERE and get a T.S. chit for the Chaplain’s office. I’m done
wi’ ye!
simple, but there’s a real trick to doing this:
The tricks are
(1) keeping track of the line being tucked and the progression,
(2) tucking the last two lines, and
(3) the method of tightening the hitch to the work.
Now, I can’t tell you how many lines to make up around the work, that’s something you’ll have to figure out for yourself, but the
rule of thumb is dividing the circumference of the work by 2 and adding one line... so IF you have a 6” circumference work
and IF your lines are 1/8” , you’ll wind up with 25 lines (approximately). When it comes to math, I’m all thumbs, so that’s the
method I use. (1/8" line = 8 lines per inch x 6” = 48 / 2 = 24 + 1 = 25. It ain’t pretty, but it DO work.
Figuring the circumference of the work is fairly complex if you use mathematical formulas (lessee: measure the diameter,
then half that for radius, then Pi x R squared, throw away the 6 and put in a stropped block.... ahhhh, the hell with it.) Just
take a piece of butchers twine or heavy white thread and wrap it around the work to be covered three or four times.... hold it
in place and make a pencil mark across the wraps, unwrap it and measure the distance between the marks.... close enough
for Navigation! If you wanna be even closer, measure the distance between ALL the marks and average them out. Works for
me and it don’t strain my brane.
Another tricky part is how LONG to cut the lines you’ll use for the hitching.... This is tricky, and I’ve never really solved it well.
I’m sure there’s a formula (damn formulas again!) for how long in relation to the diameter of the lines used with consideration
for the ends, but I just take a shot and pray. I usually wind up “on the side of the angles and (Angels? Yah, them.) have line left
over, but that’s OK too, and you can use it for puddings for chest beckets and more bellropes and like that, or (if you have
more than a 1 foot piece) strip it out and use the parts for constrictors. If you DON’T allow enough, you may need to stop
halfway thru the hitching and start again with a new set of lines, and use a turkshead to cover the join. On most work you’ll
have a decorative turks somewhere along the length of the work, so that’s no disaster, but I’ll generally allow 4 times the
finished length and a little slop for 4.5 times, and I may add a bit more.
OK: now you’ve got the diameter of the work and the number of lines to use, make them up around the work at one end about
an inch from where you really want the hitching to start .... arrange them more-or-less evenly around the work and then put a
constrictor on ‘em to make ‘em fast. Leave about seven or eight inches hanging loose on the upper end so you’ll have
something to use when you come back to back-hitch. The hitching will (provided you have the correct number of lines
selected) even itself out for you as you go along. You’ll back-hitch the work up to the finish point as a last step and you will
then eliminate any irregularities you may have when starting this off.... trust me, it works.
Keeping track of the lines to be tucked is accomplished by the following trick: use your thumb. Now, right- or left- handed,
the best way to do any hitching job using right-hand -laid line (the most common) is counter-clockwise around the work being
covered: why? because the lay of the lines being used will naturally tighten up if you hitch in that direction and you need all the
help you can get on this baby. Get used to using your left hand to hold the work and the right hand to do the tucks. If you’re
doing this in nylon cord, it doesn’t matter which hand you start with since it has no ‘lay’ to it - just remember that if you work
holding the piece in your right hand, reverse all the following directions.
Start by taking any three adjacent cords and, with your left thumb sticking out, drape them over it... take the first cord (left
side) and lay it up and over the other two and then back under and let your palm hold it against the work temporarily.... now
pick up the next cord is series to the right and lay IT over the thumb (the other two are still there...) so you again have three,
take the first of the three (left side) and do it all over again.... continue crossing two and picking up one until you have only two
cords on your thumb and are back around at the cord that got the first tuck.... now the tricky part.
Take the left cord on your thumb and go over the ‘orphan’ and tuck thru the loop formed by number 1, then take the ‘orphan’
and tuck it down into BOTH the loop 1 and loop 2. Note that you’re still crossing two lines when you do this....
It’ll take you a few tries to get it right (took me MORE than a few before I got it) but once you DO get it, it becomes second
nature.
Now, for tightening up the tucks.... I take the work in left hand (just like you did when you were tucking), and put your left
thumb on the spot where the lines tuck through, grasp a line with your right hand and snug it down, using the left thumb to
hold the line snugged.. take the next line to the LEFT and do it again, and so on, gradually working all the way around and
moving the work a little each time so you're more or less keeping the lines snugged in.... you’ll probably need to do this two or
three times around to get it fairly tight, but just get it fairly tight.... now start the next row and do all the tucks and then the
tugging-in for a snug fit, and by the third pass, you should start to see a pattern emerging, as well as having the lines sitting
fairly snugly after only two passes.
(TIP: When snugging the course down, I take the line I just snugged and stick it under the fingertips of the left hand and keep
adding each new one as I move around to the left.... this tends to hold the pulled lines taut and snugs up the work a little faster,
IMHO.)
Ok: Turn on the stereo or whatever and go to it.... just keep on tucking the circles and then tightening the other way and you
should have a fair amount of work finished in about an hour.
Stop. Look at the work. Is it all even? Did you have a problem with tightening up things? Is there a line sticking out
somewhere that didn't get tucked in?
The mark of a good 'over-two' hitch job is when the pattern forms completely vertical, or along the line of the work. If it has a
spiral right appearance, you have too few lines, if you have a spiral left, too many.
PROBLEMS:
(a) there seems to be a gap in the work when I tighten up everything....
OK: at the next tuck, cut another line to length and add it in to the pattern. If you need to add two, then add them at opposite
sides. If you need to add three, you may have (censored) up the measurements, or perhaps my formulae are suspect., (Well,
why not? I’VE been a suspect before...) so send me an email and let’s commiserate on this.
(b) no mater how hard I try to snug them down, there’s a loose ‘lip’ to the courses when I finally give up, like a shawl collar on
a pretty blonde...
Probably too MANY lines in the hitching... try dropping a few out one per course until you get a snug fit around the work but no
gaps.
(c) I missed a cord on a previous row...
Until you get used to doing this, pull out the row(s) until you get to the one where the offending cord is, then continue the work
from there. IF IT AIN’T RIGHT, GO BACK AND FIX IT AS SOON AS YOU NOTICE IT! Otherwise you’ll have a sloppy job and you will
ALWAYS know that there’s an error right there. You’ll probably decide it needs fixing anyway, so you may as well do it while
the delay is minimal. Again, TRUST ME ON THIS!
(d) my hands are sore after about twenty minutes work....
NOT funny! Your hands WILL hurt, especially if you have landsman’s hands and skin (un-callused) and are unused to
working with small, rough line. All I can tell you is that when your hands start to really hurt, STOP for a day. Whatever you do,
you DON’T want to wear open a raw or bleeding wound on your hands or fingers. (NOT because I like you: I could care less,
but the blood will stain the work and you’ll have to start all over again or splice in to replace the stained section.... When I first
learned to do ropework, I didn’t have the luxury of resting a day and instead soaked my hands in a heavy brine solution (try
THAT on raw skin.... makes a root canal seem like a vacation!) until I started to get my calluses. Now, if I do two squareknot
belts, I can put a cigarette out on the side of my pinky and never feel it, but YOU don’t wanna do that, so take it easy, allow your
hands to get acclimated and if you need to, get a couple pair of those white cotton gloves women use when doing their
lingerie or handling stockings.... they’re thin enough that you can still feel what you're doing, cheap enough that you can wear
‘em out and throw ‘em away easily and white so they don’t dirty up your work. Kevlar sailing gloves ( minus the first joint of
the fingers and thumbs) will also do the trick, but they may leave a residue on the work and they’re HIDEOUSLY expensive. I
do this all day, so I just build up the calluses and ignore the whole thing. YMMV. CAUTION: Nylon cord, especially braided
small “mini-blind” type cord, will eat you alive in nothing flat, going thru a callus as what would resist any type of manila or
cotton ropes like the proverbial “hot knife”....
OK. Assuming that all is going well, you should have just about covered the work in hand and be approaching the end-point.
Keep hitching until you get to one course away from where you want to stop, then take all the lines and constrictor them to
the work, put another constrictor on the lines and then you can trim them off and that end will be ready for covering with a
turkshead or whatever you want to use to hide the end.
Now go back to the starting point and turn the work end-for end. You’ll probably have two or three rows that just don't look as
good as the rest of the work, so pull them out until you get to the ‘good stuff” and then just start tucking again until you get to
one course away from your end point, constrictor and trim as previously and you’re finished.
You CAN end this off with a footrope knot made up of the (however many) strands you used for the hitching, but that’s a
complicated project and quite easy to screw up.... try it if you’d like to. Don’t constrictor the ends: convert from an ‘over-two’
to a simple ‘over one’ crown, do an ‘over-one’ wall beneath it and pass it thru two or three times. It’s a pretty knot but a
bugger to fair up and get looking right.
If you’re going to varnish the hitching, now’s the time to do it, before you put on your turksheads. You want the varnish to
penetrate all the lines in the hitching, and if you apply the turksheads and then varnish, there will be a section of line ends
under the turksheads which will remain unprotected and prone to ‘wicking’ up any water the work may be exposed to.
Promotes rot. Not good.
If any of the above is not clear, or if you think there’s a mistake, go HERE and get a T.S. chit for the Chaplain’s office. I’m done
wi’ ye!