Smorster

How to make a TREENET: Tight Perimeter

PAULIS Barzdins · 19m 10s · Watch on YouTube · 13 sources

Decision Card

Effort: Backyard afternoon — one thick perimeter rope, ~3 m of paracord, three trees, and 2–3 hours to practice four knots (alpine butterfly, double fisherman’s, prusik, slipped half hitch) and run the full tension-reset cycle once.

Honest take: The presenter himself admits he doesn’t know the actual mechanical advantage of his rope-through-loop system (“I’m not sure if this is a one to one”), and published analysis of the equivalent trucker’s hitch shows friction eats most of the theoretical 3:1 gain — so the repeated reset-and-pull cycles, not the pulley ratio, are doing most of the work here. He also concedes the method is “a bit of a hassle” and that the final double fisherman’s tie-off unavoidably gives back some tension.

Concrete next steps:

  • Learn the two load-bearing knots first: Alpine Butterfly Loop and Double Fisherman’s Bend on Animated Knots (~30 min with rope in hand).
  • Check your paracord-to-perimeter-rope diameter ratio against the 60–80% prusik guideline at VDiff Climbing before relying on the press loop to bind (~5 min).
  • Rig a test perimeter on three trees and run at least two full tension-reset cycles, retiring the paracord section that took the friction beating afterward (~1–2 hours).
  • Skip if you’re fine carrying a ratchet strap or small pulley — this entire technique exists only to serve a “rope, paracord, and knife” minimalism constraint, and hardware gets you a tighter perimeter faster.

TL;DR

A hand-tightened treenet perimeter that feels tight goes slack the moment you weave into it perpendicularly, so the video builds a gear-free tensioning system from paracord: a prusik-style “press loop” gripping the perimeter rope, alpine butterfly anchor points, and repeated pull–lock–reset cycles with slipped half hitches. The final connection is dressed into a double fisherman’s, accepting a small tension loss in exchange for a compact, snag-free knot.

Key Points

  • Pulling a perimeter rope tight by hand and locking it with two half hitches is deceptive — the loop feels tight but loses most of its tension under perpendicular load once weaving starts. 02:10
  • The method is deliberately minimalist: no ratchet straps or climbing gear, only the perimeter rope, paracord, and a knife. 02:31
  • One end of the perimeter connection is committed as a double fisherman’s; the other is left sliding (held by two half hitches) so it can still be adjusted during tensioning. 03:11
  • The core tool is a paracord “press loop” — a small loop closed with a double fisherman’s, wrapped three times around the thick rope prusik-style, which slides when slack but binds when pulled sideways. 03:48
  • The press loop only works with a smaller-diameter cord gripping a thicker rope. 05:58
  • Alpine butterflies (three wraps around the hand, middle strand passed over and through) create mid-rope anchor points; adding a second butterfly and re-weaving the paracord through it increases the pulling ratio noticeably. 09:00
  • Tension is gained iteratively: pull the paracord system, lock it with slipped half hitches, take slack out of the perimeter knot, reset the prusik to proper distance, and repeat “again and again until I cannot anymore.” 14:04
  • The process visibly abrades the paracord sheath — the presenter warns not to trust it with your life afterward. 15:16
  • Anchor spacing is a compromise: closer butterflies would extract more stretch, but you need room between them for the knots themselves. 17:21
  • For extreme tension needs, a loop-and-rope-through final connection lets you crank under tension instead of tying a double fisherman’s — but it’s bulkier and creates a tripping/rotational hazard on the net. 18:12

Notable Quotes

“So, even though I tried really hard, take it in tight, it’s still actually very loose once you start pulling on it perpendicularly.” 02:18

“I like my tree net making to be very raw, very vanilla. I want only the perimeter rope and the paracord with me and the knife.” 02:37

“So maybe don’t trust the paracord with your life after you’ve done this to it.” 15:16

Verified Claims

  1. The alpine butterfly forms a fixed loop mid-rope (no rope ends needed) and handles loading in multiple directions. 08:55 — Sources: Animated Knots: Alpine Butterfly Loop, Wikipedia: Butterfly loop. The knot is tied in the bight and safely takes load loop-to-either-end or end-to-end, exactly why it works as a mid-rope anchor here. Verdict: Confirmed.

  2. The double fisherman’s is a secure, compact way to join two rope ends into a loop. 03:01 — Sources: Animated Knots: Double Fisherman’s Bend, Wikipedia: Double fisherman’s knot. Regarded as among the most secure bends, standard in climbing for closing cord loops; known trade-off is that it locks up nearly permanently after loading — consistent with the video’s half hitches becoming “almost buried” (16:06). Verdict: Confirmed.

  3. A prusik-style wrap slides freely when unweighted but binds when tensioned sideways, and requires a smaller-diameter cord on a thicker rope. 05:52 — Sources: VDiff Climbing: Prusik types, Wikipedia: Prusik knot. Standard guidance is cord at 60–80% of host rope diameter; too-thick cord won’t generate enough friction to grip. Verdict: Confirmed.

  4. Passing the rope through an anchor loop and pulling back gives a tension advantage (presenter: “I’m not sure if this is a one to one or what”). 07:29 — Sources: Wikipedia: Trucker’s hitch, Animated Knots: Trucker’s Hitch. The equivalent trucker’s hitch is theoretically 3:1 but friction through a rope loop (vs. a pulley) drops it to roughly 1.6:1 or even near 1:1 — the presenter’s uncertainty is warranted, though the friction usefully holds gained tension while locking off. Verdict: Confirmed (advantage is real but far below theoretical).

  5. Repeated high-friction tensioning abrades the paracord sheath, and sheath damage means it should no longer be trusted for safety-critical loads. 15:12 — Sources: Crate Club: Can paracord be used for climbing?, Primal Survivor: How strong is paracord really? Paracord’s thin sheath offers little abrasion protection; a compromised sheath exposes core strands and can lead to total failure, and dynamic loads can exceed the 550 lb static rating anyway. Verdict: Confirmed.

  6. Slipped half hitches (pulling a loop through instead of the end) hold a load but release with one pull, making them right for temporary lock-offs. 07:46 — Sources: Knotspedia: Slippery Half Hitch, Animated Knots: Quick Release Knots. Slipped variants are the standard choice for frequently adjusted loads; caveat is they can shake loose under dynamic load, which is fine here since they’re interim lock-offs replaced by a double fisherman’s. Verdict: Confirmed.

  7. Adding a second alpine butterfly and re-weaving through it yields “a bigger ratio of strength.” 08:48 — Sources: Liquisearch: Trucker’s hitch — mechanical advantage and friction, Wikipedia: Trucker’s hitch. Each added redirect raises theoretical mechanical advantage, but each rope-on-rope bend adds friction that dissipates much of it — real gains diminish per added butterfly, matching the video’s own observation that it “becomes a bit of a hassle” for modest extra tension. Verdict: Confirmed with caveat.

Tools, Papers & Standards Mentioned

Follow-up Questions

  1. What is the measured (not theoretical) mechanical advantage of a two-butterfly paracord tensioning rig on rope, and at what point does adding a third redirect gain nothing due to friction?
  2. How much tensile strength does paracord actually lose after one full perimeter-tensioning session’s worth of sheath abrasion — is the woven-in “waste” paracord from the tensioning system still safe as net webbing?
  3. How does this knots-only approach compare in final perimeter tension and setup time against the channel’s earlier tensioning video and hardware methods (e.g., soft shackles or a rope-friendly pulley), as covered in How To Make A Treenet: Tensioning The Perimeter?

Sources