Following a suggestion by the great tyer of string Mr 'Paddy' Morris, we've recently looked at a new, and intensely obscure, knot for making up the harness-end loops on a set of cowstails. The 'horizontal Matthew Walker knot' has, as far as we know, never been used for anything even remotely related to climbing and rope access, and instead has been the knot of choice for salt-encrusted sea-dogs wishing to fashion rope ladders and impress The Ladies. It appears in Ashley (#800) but not a lot since then, and that's a shame.
It turns out that the HMWK is rather a good choice (compared to the usual figure-8 loop knot) and is equally strong, well-behaved even under expansion, but an utter beast of a knot to learn. If there is one knot that you won't be able to get right twice in a row, it's this one - but if you can, it's a damn good knot. It looks nice too!
You can download our report from the link below, which includes test data and background info. It's a 4.8MB Adobe PDF with embedded videos, so you'll need to have Adobe Reader 9, or Acrobat 9, installed in order to open it.
http://www.uvsar.com/downloads/bulletin_0810_HMWK.pdf
