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Best knot teacher
Animated Knots, animatedknots.com All knots are knotty and hard to visualize the first time. This free website is the best knot teacher yet. It beats any of the beginner books I’ve seen, as well as all the other knot websites. The key here is the stepped animations synchronized with instructions, which you can run at any speed. Replay them till you get them right. Animated Knots is the next best thing to having old Pete next to ya. Once you get the basic ones down, try some of the harder ones. There are 75 cool knots animated in total. – KK
Next step beyond the basic knots
Morrow Guide to Knots, $18 Knots are such fundamental tools, and matching the right job with the right knot is so often essential, the important next step from the Klutz Book is the equally lucid and fairly comprehensive Morrow Guide to Knots. Last week my wife Ryan gave a glad cry at the clarity in the book when she wanted to see a couple ways to tie a clove hitch, and learned that it’s easy to put a slip in a clove hitch for quick release. – Stewart Brand
Knot substitute
Nite Ize Figure 9 Carabiner, $7 The Figure 9 carabiner lets you quickly fasten – and quickly loosen or adjust – a small-diameter rope to a fixed point without a knot deploying a clever combination of friction and angles. To those of us with knot-dyslexia, this is a real boon. The only requirement: your fixed attachment point must feature either a place to clip the carabiner (i.e. a metal loop in a pick-up truck bed or a thin, sturdy tree branch), or something around which your line can be looped. That could mean securing a Tarp tent to a tree, improvising a handle around a bundle of cables, or securing a travel clothesline between window-grate and curtain-rod.
All you need to do is pull the rope through in the right sequence and finish with the rope’s loose end tugged into the notched “V” section to keep the rope attached and taut. There are actually multiple sequences and ways to work the geometry. Three methods are diagrammed in the instructions that come with the carabiner.
Thus far, I have used the devices only with standard-issue parachute cord, but they’re sized to work with a range of small-diameter ropes. Though the tying system looks suspiciously wimpy, I’ve found it is as robust as promised. I ordered the Figure 9s to replace the mesh netting that came with the roof-rack basket on my car. Not only do these make a decent replacement (i.e. riding around with a kayak strapped to my car this summer), but tying one more knot under the car is something I’m glad to skip. Note: the device is anodized aluminum and weighs a bit more than I expected (slight downside to ultra-light hikers); still, “Not for climbing” is printed on the packaging, repeated in the instructions, and emblazoned on each carabiner. I think they mean it. – Timothy Lord
Quick, easy tie-down
Rope Ratchet, $20 (¼-inch, w/rope) roperatchet.com I wanted to rig a single line of rope across the ceiling of my garage for a storage solution, but was concerned about getting the line tight enough to keep from sagging. Rather than tie up a come-along winch – which requires a lot more hook up room and has a tendency to release quite hard – I saw the Rope Ratchet and decided to give it a try; I’m glad I did. The contraption is basically a rope that’s fed into and around a ratcheting wheel and bracket that holds the line and prevents backspin; you can release the line with a lever. It’s quite simple, but I haven’t seen anything quite like it. I’m using one to hold up a 70-lbs. tackle bag 6 feet off the floor of my garage and another holding about 80 lbs. of plastic lures on a rope stretched across hooks against the ceiling of my garage. I’m using the ¼-inch Rope Ratchet that’s rated for a working load of 150 lbs., but there are different sizes for different needs: the 1/8-inch will hold 75 lbs. up, while the ½-inch will hold 500 lbs. After a number of months, mine are holding strong with no sign of failure. – Doug Mainor
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A cool tool can be any book, gadget, software, video, map, hardware, material, or website that is tried and true. All reviews on this site are written by readers who have actually used the tool and others like it. Items can be either old or new as long as they are wonderful. We post things we like and ignore the rest. Suggestions for tools much better than what is recommended here are always wanted.
Awkward Zombie is one of my favorite webcomics. Creator Katie Tiedrich writes a comic that focuses on parodying video games of all kinds, with the occasional strip drawn from poking fun at her own life. Fans of video games will find a lot to laugh at here. We’re Going to be Rich! collects the first 100 comics originally posted to Tiedrich’s website, Awkward Zombie, and is available in softcover or special edition hardcover format.
In this first volume, Tiedrich primarily writes about Nintendo games like Super Smash Bros and various entries in the Legend of Zelda series, with other games popping up occasionally. If you’re a fan of those games you’ll likely love every panel, as Tiedrich has a great ability to point out the funny logical problems present in these games. One of my favorite such comics makes a joke about the potential difficulties with surfing in Pokemon. Even if you’ve never played a particular game she’s referencing, the jokes tend to be broad enough to understand by more general video game fans. You may have never played World of Warcraft, but if you’ve played any role-playing game you may understand the humor in a large character trying to fit into stolen armor that logically should be much too small for them.
Tiedrich’s art stye is perfectly suited to the sort of sideways world parody she excels at. The first couple of comics may seem crude, but they become more refined as the book progresses. It’s kind of funny actually because as Tiedrich develops her own style and the characters begin to resemble each other, she even further exaggerates the physical attributes that make them unique. Being a parody, each character resembles the character it parodies just enough to get the idea, but it isn’t as if Tiedrich is trying to do copies of those characters. She usually makes them even more cartoony than they already are, with fun results (look at how goofy Luigi looks, but it is still clearly Luigi).
One thing I wish was translated into the book a bit more frequently is Tiedrich’s tendency to explain the comic with a note underneath. She self-deprecatingly references this in one of the comics, but it only pops up a few more times after that. Tiedrich seems to think it’s a hokey device, but those are some of my favorite bits of comedy and I miss them here.
If nothing else, it is my hope that you may read this book and follow Tiedrich’s work on her site. She has many more comics available and updates semi-regularly. Fans can even suggest comic ideas on her forum, which she periodically produces. Sadly, We’re Going to be Rich! is the only book she’s released so far, but hopefully there will be more to come. – Alex Strine
BONE IS POSSIBLY ONE OF THE BEST FANTASY SERIES EVER TOLD. HERE’S ITS CODA
Bone: Coda (25th Anniversary Special) by Jeff Smith Cartoon Books 2016, 136 pages, 6.4 x 8.9 x 0.5 inches (softcover)
If you haven’t read Jeff Smith’s Bone series, just stop. Stop reading right now, mid sentence, and go pick up his masterpiece. It’s wonderful. Quite possibly one of the greatest fantasy stories ever told. Once you’ve read that and fallen in love with Smith’s humor and characters, then you can appreciate this follow-up that gives you a reason to revisit the Bone Brothers.
If you aren’t familiar with the Bone series, this coda won’t interest you. It’s a companion piece that includes interviews of Smith, an oral history by comic historian Stephen Weiner, and early illustrations of the Bone characters. I found it compelling to hear that Bone was a story that almost wasn’t. But through determination, some luck, and careful maneuvering, Smith was able to get the comic off the ground. It’s great inspiration for any independent artist out there.
But the best part about this book is that there’s a new Bone story to be had! The brothers and Bartleby are still in route back to Boneville, when in true Bone fashion things go awry. It’s not a long story, or a deep one, but it’s a reminder about everything that was so great about this series. It’s a little heartbreaking that Smith makes a point to define coda as “the concluding passage of a piece or movement, typically forming an addition to the base structure.” Hopefully we’ll see more from this world, but for now this is a pretty good sendoff. If you’re a completest, you’re going to need to pick this up. – JP LeRoux
Books That Belong On Paper first appeared on the web as Wink Books and was edited by Carla Sinclair.Sign up here to get the issues a week early in your inbox.
