How to Tie a Taut Line

All right , we're gonna take a look .

Now at the top line knot , top line knot is a neat knot because it allows you to shorten or lengthen a piece of rope depending on what you need .

I use this knot all the time when I'm out camping .

Um , especially when I'm tying down rain flies or dinner flies .

Uh , because I've noticed in the middle of the night , your rain fly can get kind of loose .

So instead of having to move the stake in order to tighten the rope , you can just slide up your top line knot and you got a nice tight line , um , for your , for your rain fly .

So let's get started with the top line knot .

All right .

So we're back to our imaginary tree here and for now , we're going to imagine this lamp post is a tent stake , ok ?

So we're gonna take the rope and bring it around the tent stake like so , so we have our working in the rope in our left hand and the standing of the rope in our right .

So we're gonna take the working in the rope and we're going to bring it underneath the standing of the rope like that .

So it looks like that and we're gonna take the working in the rope and we're gonna bring it down through this loop between our fingers and the pole .

So we form one coil .

So it looks like that .

What we're gonna do now is we just wanna repeat that , take the working end and bring it down through this loop and form a second coil .

What we're gonna do now is we're gonna take this working in the rope and bring it back towards us and underneath the standing of the rope like that .

And so you're gonna form ad .

All right .

So you have a loop here onto the right .

You're gonna take the working in the rope and you're gonna bring it back around and down through that loop that you just created .

So now you have three coils .

So just all you have to do now is just tighten it up like so and you got your top line on .

So as I , as I said in the intro , you can slide it up , you can slide it down to tighten or loosen depending on your needs .