A field guide. Nothing more, nothing less.
WhatKnot exists because every scout and every leader deserves a clean, honest, free reference for the twelve knots that matter most. No ads. No accounts. No fluff.
Twelve knots, taught well.
The knots in WhatKnot were chosen because they cover the situations a scout will actually meet: stoppers, bends, hitches, and one good loop. Master these and the rest of knot tying becomes building blocks rather than a wall of new shapes.
The site is built as plain HTML, CSS, and a tiny bit of JavaScript. No frameworks, no trackers, no cookies. Every file lives in the project root, hosted free on Cloudflare Pages, with the source on GitHub.
Sources and creditsWhere the pictures come from.
Knot photographs and diagrams are sourced from Wikimedia Commons, including a number of high quality U.S. Coast Guard reference photos in the public domain, and a series of historical diagrams from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica which are also public domain. Forest and bushcraft hero imagery is from Unsplash contributors under the Unsplash Licence, which permits free use.
If you spot a credit that should be more specific, send a note via the contact link in the footer. Attribution matters.
ReuseUse it. Share it. Improve it.
The site code is open source. The text on each knot page was written for WhatKnot. You are welcome to print pages for your troop, your classroom, or your own bookshelf. If you want to translate or adapt the content, get in touch first so we can do it in a way that keeps the credits straight.
Get in touch.
Found a typo? Have a knot you think should join the twelve? Want to share a photo of your own pioneering project? We would love to hear about it. Drop a note via the project's GitHub repository.