Number of Coils
Each additional coil adds friction to the knot, which makes the noose harder to pull closed or open. The number of coils should therefore be adjusted depending on the intended use, the type and thickness of rope, and environmental conditions such as wet or greasy rope. Six to eight loops are normal when using natural ropes. One coil makes it equivalent to the simple slip knot. Traditionally speaking, thirteen coils is considered a true "hangman's" noose/knot, as anything less might strangle a person inhumanely. The true hangman's noose was designed to snap a person's neck, making death quicker and less painful.
The number thirteen was thought to be unlucky. Consequently, thirteen coils were found in a hangman’s noose, a foreboding sign for those convicted to be hanged.
Woody Guthrie sings of the hangman using thirteen coils:
"Did you ever see a hangman tie a hangknot? I've seen it many a time and he winds, he winds, After thirteen times he's got a hangknot."
Read more about this topic: Hangman's Knot
Famous quotes containing the words number of, number and/or coils:
“He is the richest man who knows how to draw a benefit from the labors of the greatest number of men, of men in distant countries, and in past times.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Cultivated labor drives out brute labor. An infinite number of shrewd men, in infinite years, have arrived at certain best and shortest ways of doing, and this accumulated skill in arts, cultures, harvestings, curings, manufactures, navigations, exchanges, constitutes the worth of our world to-day.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Squalor spreads its hideous length
through the carts and the asses’ feet,
squalor coils and reopens
and creeps under barrow
and heap of refuse....”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)