Netting . . . holes tied together with string

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The needle in the picture is made of a lovely bit of mahogany five-ply a quarter of an inch thick, left over from building a boat. Although wood is the best material, I've also fabricated this piece of netting equipment out of hardboard (such as Masonite) which works quite well until hard use makes the point start to come apart. I suppose a good needle could be cut from sheet metal, but I've never tried.

The device shown in the illustration is six inches long by one inch wide, a good average size to start with. The measurements of the tool determine how small a mesh you can make ... you must use a small needle to manufacture fine webbing and a large one to carry a reasonable supply of the heavy cord generally chosen for the construction of very coarse mesh nets.

LET'S MAKE A STRING BAG

A good way to start your first project is with a ball of macramé twine, which is both easy to manipulate and makes a satisfyingly strong net. Don't be afraid to use another string if you can't get macrame, though ... any strong cord about as thick as a pencil lead will do.

Load your netting needle (sometimes called a bobbin) with the twine: Take a turn of the free end of the ball of string around the tool's pin and carry the cord around the bottom end of the bobbin, back up the other side, around the pin, back down under ... and so on until the reel is full. Cut the twine.

Tie a loop—big enough to let the needle slip through freely—in the end of the string coming from the needle. Call this Loop 1. Slip the circle of cord over a hook in the wall or tie it to a doorknob, a low branch of a tree, the back of a chair, whatever. When I was young my embryonic long-net for rabbiting was constructed with its first loop tied to the U-trap under the washbasin in the bathroom.

Your project now looks like Fig. 2.
Pass the twine over three fingers of your hand and thread the needle through Loop 1 (see Fig. 3). Catch the string and Loop 1 between finger and thumb, with the twine gently gauged around three fingers as shown in Fig. 4. Pass the cord behind Loop 1 and, last of all, carry the string behind Loop 1 and under itself (Fig. 5) ... then pull the twine tight.

Congratulations! You have just made a netter's knot. If you look at it closely, you will see that it's actually a sheet bend.

Beware: it's possible to mismake this knot if you fail to catch the twine and Loop I between thumb and forefinger. In that case you'll form, instead, a slipknot which will run back and forth along Loop 1. If this misfortune occurs, a sharp jerk on the needle against the newly formed loop will cause the knot to become a sheet bend. (if I hadn't written this article I might never have known that the sheet bend and the slipknot were so closely related.)

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