"Large" eye of tie-in knot: dangerous?
There's a dispute in my climbing group whether a "large" eye of the tie-in knot can be considered dangerous. While I don't see a problem with a loop that is about 10 cm across, others argue that the loop should be as tight as possible.
We're climbing indoors and use figure-of-eight or double bowline as tie-in knots.
What could be more dangerous when using a "large" loop?
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If you fall, and it gets caught on something on the way down, you're gonna have a bad time.
It's pretty unlikely that it will catch on something (though here's a similar (horrible) story), but the sudden stop would cause a lot of damage. I think this would be worse than a factor 2 fall, because you've already been accelerating and then are being stopped by a very short piece of rope?
Also, if it's a really huge loop and you're lead climbing, you could clip the loop by accident, which would essentially be a factor 2 fall if you kept climbing above it and then fell when it went taut?
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In case of the double bowline it gets undone more easily than with a small eye, as it can move more.
For the figure of eight the only factor I can think of is the same as with a too long loose end: If you clip in a hurry and the express is rather low, it can happen that you clip the wrong strand. That might seem unlikely, but given enough time/repetitions, almost anything can happen. With the loose end it means a long fall, with the eye it's worse, as it will block you, which can easily lead to a fall, which then gets arrested almost statically by the express. That's ~30cm fall, which is already quite bad and potentially leading to injury.
And outside it also falls on the general rule of keep your gear and setup neat and tidy. Anything loose is anything from an annoyance to a real danger.
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Indoors, with the loop tied directly into the harness, short of taking the mickey, the worst I can think of is that you might get hit in the face by the knot.
The knot itself is just as safe and 10cm is not silly. I'd be perfectly happy from a safety point of view climbing on a 10cm figure-of-8 or double-bowline. Or for that matter a 20cm loop, though I'd prefer not to for non-safety reasons.
It's at least possible it leads to another mistake. Generally anything sloppy is less obviously when it's wrong. That could be the setup itself or something looking like: the rope looking like the slack is all gone, but there is still slack in the knot. However, that is a really subjective line of thinking and if you're relying on something like that to be safe, you have other problems.
You also slightly lose the compliance in the rope but the extent is tiny between a 5cm and 10cm eye.
I think this is a hang-up from outdoors where things getting snagged/taffled etc is more likely and more dangerous.
All that said, why wouldn't you tie a neat loop?
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