What is the Common Whipping?
The Common Whipping knot is a way to protect a rope from fraying, but it can also be used to decorate handles of knives and axes. The Common Whipping is the simplest form of a whipping. The big advantage, besides it being easy, is that there are no tools required to tie the Common Whipping.
How does the Common Whipping work?
The Common Whipping is not in any way attached to the rope and only stays in place because of friction. Because of this, it's not recommended to use the Common Whipping on ends of rope that are often handled. Therefore the Common Whipping is mostly used as a temporary fix or as decoration.
Remarks
When the Common Whipping is tied at the end of a rope to prevent it from fraying, it's length should be roughly 1.5 times the diameter of the rope.
Also known as
Some synonyms for the Common Whipping are Plain Whipping, Wolf Whipping or Ordinary Whipping.