I've always felt that obsessive concern with knot strength is somewhat wasted effort. Modern climbing ropes have a rather large safety margin with regards to strength. People die when anchors rip out of the rock. People die when ropes get cut over sharp edges of rock. But one simply doesn't hear much about real instances of people dying because the rope broke at a knot.

I think the key factors for knots are can they be easily tied correctly, and are they easy to check? Are they secure when tied correctly, and can they be untied once they've been loaded? I once saw a climbing partner come untied from the belay in the middle of a pitch. He had somehow miss-tied his tie in knot, and it simply came untied as he was moving up the pitch. Fortunately, he didn't fall, so the incident was very scary, but not catastrophic. Note that after that he became extremely methodical in checking all of his knots!


Edited by AKSAR (11/28/17 07:28 PM)
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