Re: Crimping dial cords
 

I'd agree the picture looks like a bowline.

A reef knot is designed to be fairly easy to undo. A Fishermans knot might be more secure, though hard to tie under tension. That said, tying half, and then marking as suggested is easier as you only need one hand to hold the cord.

Re: Crimping dial cords
 

The way I always remember the bowline is the rabbit comes out of the hole, round the tree and back down the hole again, I use it when I'm down the woods with braided rope sometimes when winching stuff out, the loop doesn't slip under high strain and it can be undone no problem.

Lawrence.

Re: Crimping dial cords
 

Historically, I've always replaced stretchy fabric-cords with thin-and-flexible stainless-steel "pike lines" freely available from fishing-shops.

These don't 'relax' with age (so throwing the dial-pointer calibration out). The best way to anchor these is to get one of the 'barrel connectors' from a cheap 5A choc-block connector and slice it in half, then use each of the halves to clamp the stainless-steel wire.

[OK, I will confess to having a bit of an anally-retentive thing about dial-calibrations... if the string-provided pointer on a dial is off by a few Kilohertz/Metres I get really annoyed]