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alt227today at 3:48 PM3 repliesview on HN

> coming undone multiple times per day (unless double knotted)

You have bad laces. I thought this too before I tried different laces. Turns out different tensions and elasticities give different strengths of knots.

For example I have some military boots which came with slightly stretchy laces. They NEVER come undone, ever. They were the first pair that switched me on to this, and since then I have always bought laces with slight stretch to them, and the knots always stay done up.

In contrast when you buy a pair of fashion trainers, the laces in them are usually terrible and come undone several times per day as you have noted.


Replies

jonathanlydalltoday at 5:00 PM

No, it had absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the laces.

It was because I was essentially tying a granny knot instead of a reef knot and anyone who knows anything about knots would realize that of course they would keep coming undone.

And for the record, since learning how to tie the correct knot (over 10 years ago now), I’ve had no problem with laces that have come with any of the following brands of shoes:

- Nike

- New Balance

- Asics

- Converse

- Vans

rdudektoday at 4:31 PM

Do you have a brand of those laces? The original ones on my Brooks runnign shoes are usually pretty good, but overtime they start getting more loose.

Arch-TKtoday at 4:46 PM

I mean, yes, the lace quality is important too. But strictly speaking, not tying a granny knot will improve your results regardless of choice of lace.

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