Pull-Start Cord Knots - effective stopper knots

How to do-it-yourself instructional on selecting and tying the correct stopper knot when repairing pull-start cords. Demonstrates the half hitch, double half hitch stopper and figure eight knots.

Today on Repairs101 I’ve got this really sweet piece of rope and I want to show you a few things I’ve learned over the years about how to tie knots. You need to know how to tie knots if you’re going to do a repair to a pull start for instance. I’m tying stuff in knots every day and I imagine you are too. Once you learn ‘em it’s hard to un-learn ‘em.

I used to make my living as a Tree Surgeon and this piece of rope in particular was in fact my lifeline. 

So if you’re replacing the starter cord, say, in your chainsaw or say your lawnmower or your outboard engine, your generator, or a leaf blower. 

The knots you want to know are stopper knots and the stopper knots are: this one, stopper knot, and also you can use this one, the figure eight knot. Now that’s my favourite but you don’t always have enough room for the figure eight knot to fit, they don’t always give you enough space. So sometimes you have to settle for just a plain old half hitch and as long as it’s tied correctly, it’s going to be effective for you.

If your pull cord rope has broken off like this one here has, before you reuse it, what you want to do is take a take a lighter and just start the end of it up like this and get it good and hot and then when it’s nice and hot like that you want to just manipulate it like this to make sure it’s round and hard. And there you have a nice end that you can work with. OK.
As you can see I’ve melted off the end of this made it nice and easy to work with, OK, I’m just going to pass that just going to pass that end through there like that. Just push it on in just twist that on in like that. So now I’ll just pull that through and – as I say – you might want to just tie a half hitch for a stopper knot. OK I’m going to tie a half-hitch, it’s the simplest knot. Just make a loop and tuck it through itself and that’s a simple half hitch and that will hold. Just let that go on in there like that there you go. That’s a nice reliable knot and you can see its profile is down out of the way like that. OK.

Two half hitches do not necessarily make a hitch, OK, but I will show in another video all about hitches and how two half hitches can make a hitch.

One of the simpler knots you can do is called a stopper knot you just want to wrap it around your finger twice like that and then tuck it in from behind. There, like that, OK? And then when you get your finger out I’ve got this stopper knot. It’s kind of a double half hitch. Take the rope, wrap it around your hand like that then when you’ve got it like that you just pass it through like that and you’ve got a beautiful, beautiful stopper knot.

Another choice to use is the figure eight knot. OK again, that’s all there is to it is making this figure of eight. OK so you make a loop, pass it around and then back through again and you have a figure eight. OK and when you slip on it like that you’ve got a really excellent stopper. OK a figure of eight just like that and then when you pull down on it – like I say – you’ve got this excellent stopper knot. There you go it just drops right in there.

The figure eight stopper knot, that’s my favorite. Again, it unties so easily: you just bend it in half and push the tail through there and there it is.