My old union handbook from 1979 says a journeyman should know 14 knots, and I could only tie 4

Gavin Miller · 2026-09-15T16:25:05.209997+00:00

So I was digging through a box of my uncle's stuff after he passed and came across his boilermaker apprenticeship handbook from Local 92 out in LA, dated 1979. Flipping through it, there's this whole page listing 14 knots a journeyman was expected to tie from memory, bowline, clove hitch, timber hitch, sheet bend, all of them. I sat there with a piece of rope and managed 4 before I had to look one up on my phone. My uncle worked 31 years in the trade and he could do all of them one handed, half asleep, in the dark. These days most of what we rig gets slung with chokers and shackles that come pre made, so the knot work just faded out. Part of me thinks that's fine, part of me thinks we lost something. Curious what the older guys here were actually tested on for knots when they came up.

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My old union handbook from 1979 says a journeyman should know 14 knots, and I could only tie 4 | Boilermakers - The Community Guide