Knot Guide review

Mark Mackay

We review Knot Guide for the iPhone, an app the aims to get you from knot novice to boy scout with minimal effort

Published on Oct 20, 2009

Knot tying is quite the art form and one that just about every human being on the planet wishes they could do better.

It’s for precisely this reason that when we stumbled across Knot Guide in the App Store there was only one course of action to take and that was to review it.

It should be said that the only knot that we know how to tie between us is the one in our shoelaces and even that can be a struggle at times.

To test this app out, we expected to be turn from knot numpties to consummate professionals by the end of the review. At the time of writing there are about 150 knots on knot guide which should be enough for anyone to get their teeth into.

The knots are laid out by category and let us assure you that there are more knot categories than you thought possible.

We decided to start off with something that looked relatively easy and chose a surgeon’s knot. Sadly, we didn’t have any rope to hand so we had to use two Ethernet cables, but they did the job.

Photographs have been taken at each stage of the knot so leaning from the app is as easy as copying the pictures.

The images are mighty clear and of a decent enough resolution that you probably won't need your reading glasses. After six stages and a little confusion about a green squiggly arrow drawn on the page to indicate direction, we had our surgeon’s knot tied into our pair of ethernet cables.

We worked our way through some of the more complicated knots such as the Lumberman’s knot and the square lashing we were starting to get our bearings. A descriptive text is provided for each knot to give you an example of how it’s used, things to look for while tying the knot and any other names that it might be known by

While the nerdy connotations of knot tying make it easy to chuckle about (not that we’d ever do such a thing) it is a genuinely useful thing.

This app delivers on what its name promises and while the wavy green arrows that sometimes appear over a photo aren’t as clear as the images themselves, Knot Guide is a very effective way to learn the trade.