Introduction: Surgeon's Knot One-Hand Tie Cool Trick

This technique is useful for anyone in medical school, vets, anyone studying surgery, or in emergency situations in the field. This can also be applied to camping and fishing, paracord tying and as a cool trick to show your friends! As always, use CAUTION and be careful, especially if actually suturing, as it should only be by authorized licensed health-care personnel.

The video breaks it down but you may have to watch it a few times while following along. I suggest using a thicker string/rope at first to practice. The first thing to understand is that you do all the work with ONE-HAND. The other hand just holds one end of the suture tight.

To make it easy, I label the part of suture that is held still as "TIGHT end" of the suture. The part that is held in the hand that moves is called the "LOOSE end". I happened to be right-handed so I am going to hold with my left hand the "TIGHT" non-moving end of the suture, while my right hand holds the moving "LOOSE" end.

The second thing to understand is that we are actually making TWO knots... one FORWARD and the other REVERSE. This makes the knots "tighten up" and lock up against each other in a nice braid pattern. This also helps prevent loosening.

The FORWARD knot starts like this. You create an "S"-shape in the suture (loose end) using your index and ring finger of your dominant hand (I use my right hand, see video). Then you use your middle finger to grab the TIGHT end of the suture and loop it around the middle part of the "S" of the LOOSE end suture. As you do that, you have crossed the TIGHT end over the LOOSE end and have created a loop which allows you to fish the loose end through the loop and draw it out, making your first knot in the FORWARD direction.

It sounds confusing, I know. Please watch the video and pause it, carefully copying what you see there with your fingers.

The REVERSE knot is achieved by using the index finger of your dominant hand to loop the TIGHT end of the suture around the LOOSE end. As you can see in the video, you prop up the LOOSE end of the suture across your thumb, so your index is free to grab hold of the the TIGHT end suture, then cross back under and then over the LOOSE suture end. As you do this, you flip around to form what looks like an "A"-shape with the sutures above and below your index finger, which is stuck in the middle (see video). At this point, just continue to pull the rest of the LOOSE end suture on top of your index finger up through the top of the "A" and then tighten up your knot.

Congratulations! You've learned how to tie a ONE-HAND surgeon's knot suture!

Repeat the process, FORWARD and REVERSE, over and over to continue tying the knot or creating a braid-like pattern. To tighten up the knots and make them lock into each other better, you can rotate your arms a bit so that the knots compact up nicely in a square form. This will remove any spacing in the knots and create a nice tight pattern and braid that is unlikely to unravel.

Thanks for watching and reading, and I hope you enjoyed this cool trick/technique which you can use to impress your friends, or may come handy one day in a life-saving situation! Don't forget to give me a THUMBS UP on YouTube if enjoyed this tutorial. Thanks!