welcome to this video on how to tie a thistle not a thistle not in fact is a very particular kind of stopper knot and it is a combination of a crown knot and a wall knot you tie the crown knot first and then you tie the wall not second so let's go back to tying our first thistle not the first thing we need to do is to get the rope in which we want to put the thistle knot and we want to put some form of whipping this is a plain whipping made with a number 4 whipping twine but it could equally well be installation tape and I put this whipping in about 6 inches 15 centimeters from the end maybe a little bit longer than I normally would make it but I want you to be able to see exactly what it is I'm doing so I've got plenty of rope now this is six millimeter jute rope that I'm using and you can see it's being a natural rope it has a fairly loose lay and the ends here are just about to drop apart so it's really important to protect those ends so in another rope that I've already prepared you can see that I've got insulation tape around the ends here to stop the rope from unraveling completely because you can see it's a very loose lay and down here we've got the whipping that is stopping the rope from unwrapping any further so the first thing to do is to tie the crown and not in the crown knot is very seldom used on its own but it's often used as the first part of for example a back splice and you'll find it in many other splicing operations so the first thing to do is to tie the crown knot and we unravel the knot here so we've got the three strands and here we go with the crown lot it's simply a question of getting the moving in an anti Sur anti-clockwise direction we lay one of the parts over the other took that one over the third over the second and then take the third back through the first that is a crown not admittedly a very loose one I want to keep it as loose as I can so hopefully you can see that in the center is a hole where my finger is that's the center of the crown knot and that is particularly important for the next operation because the next operation all three bitter ends are going to come up through that hole that is what makes the crown not into the thistle not so just give ourselves a little bit more tension in there and you can see that that is the center here of the crown not okay so moving in an anti-clockwise direction again we take one of these ends we go round a standing part and up through the center of the crown not we rotate the rope anti-clockwise we take the next and we go round a standing part and up through the center of the crown not we rotate the rope again and we take the last end we go round the standing part and we go up through the center of the crown not so we can now see that all three of these bitter ends are together coming through to the hole in the middle of the crown knot and although it is incredibly loose that is in fact a thistle knot and all that remains now is to move the knot strand by strand down towards the whipping here where my son is so we do that by just moving a little bit of the slack at a time following this bit of slack that I've introduced all the way around the knot and tugging up the loose end and you just have to do this bit by bit by bit as you go round the not moving the knot each time further down towards the whipping eventually you will end up with a tightened up thistle knot like this and when you are tightening up the thistle knot and you're pulling on these individual strands make sure that you roll the splice roll the knot between your palms of your hands and you'll get an extra little bit of tension on these ends as you pull them through when you come to trim the ends some people have a temptation to cut them much closer to the knot than really is necessary so leave yourself an inch or so two and a half centimeters at the end and there the knot has been moved down right on top of the whipping there's no way that is going to come undone and that's a very secure this or not so that's it relatively easy knot to tie you just need a some whipping twine you certainly need some insulation tape if you don't want to leave the whipping twine on permanently then of course you can use insulation tape and take it off afterwards but I quite like to leave the whipping twine on so whipping twine insulation tape sometimes a pair of sharp pliers is useful for just getting the ends through the center of the knot and giving them a tug certainly very useful for doing the plane whipping in the middle and then your obviously your favorite cutting instrument for finishing the ends off so there it is once this or not