B Deleted_Beck

i've had some small luck cleaning up the contacts on powertool triggers when a trigger replacement was impractical or impossible. they get rusty and jacked up after a while.. a steel bristle brush or some 200+ grit sandpaper can bring them back to life.

edit!

figured i'd edit this thing to be a standing invitation for rocky butte climbing. i have been putting together a guidebook for the place, and have a decent book with almost all the routes on the major walls, and still collecting beta on others.. but should have plenty to keep us busy for a day, especially if you're not that familiar with the place. i'm a sport/TR climber, but i'm down for learning some trad, or belaying your trad climbs. i'm a pretty solid 5.8-.9 on toprope, solid .7 on sport lead, and am still pretty new to real rock, so am still in the midst of rapidly getting better. but just because i can't yet climb a 10c doesn't mean i can't belay one. email or text me if you want to try to meet down there.. i'm self-employed, so i write my own schedule, and have FAIRLY flexible hours. i also go down there and solo all by my lonesome sometimes, so if you see a guy with a jack-o-lantern on his head and a Glock 17 on his thigh, feel free to wave me down. i'm friendly. -ben bkb0000@comcast.net 503-327-fourtwofourfour

what exactly do you have in mind (why specifically looking for parents)? we have 4 boys; 1, 3, 5 and 7... i've been slowly trying to get mine wife into climbing- she wants to, but the kids get in the way of having any kind of life aside from 24/hr parenting.

draws are not equivalent to KFC buckets and Big Mac wrappers... they're worth money. and especially when most climbers have a hard enough time scraping and saving to buy their gear, it's bullshit to just walk off with it- whether left there intentionally or not, and whether its a lot or a little. if a bigmac wrapper is chillin in the street against the curb, you pick it up and toss it. if a porche is chillin in the street against the curb, you toss it? hell no- if you're taking it for other reasons. you're depriving the rightful owner of it to convert for personal use. that's the definition of theft. so when you snag draws, obviously deliberately left somewhere, you're taking them with the intent to deprive the rightful owner and to convert to personal use- you HAVE committed theft, regardless of how you try to justify it to yourself. people shouldnt leave their draws all over the place, but they do. people shouldn't jack other peoples' shit, but they do. so take both into consideration. my noob 2 cents.

depends on the employer, and the industry. rope-access companies are often all of two or three guys strong, and rig ALL their own shit. you can't hang on the above... that's a two-leash fall arrestor, not a cowstail. different concept.

i personally wouldnt drag this clattering and snagging along on a sport route.. that's not what it's for. i'm just wondering, for those of you who do actually use cowstails at work or play, why the figure 8 seems to be the knot everyone uses. and i'm glad to see a couple guys seem to agree that it's not the knot.

great for JUST fall protection... but cowstails are also for hanging. there are some manufactured cowstails out there, but they're not always what a guy needs. making your own lets you make the tails as long or short as you need, and lets you put whatever ends on you want without extra/wasted gear.

Is this for ice tool tethers or an anchor system? it's an individual tether system... lots of different uses.. i think cavers "invented" the cowstail for traversing fixed/knotty lines, but use has expanded into rescue, rope-access, aiding, etc.. anywhere having quick, ready tethering outweighs the extra bulk and weight.

but if your attitude is "the loops wont fail," whats the point of using the 4-knot method to begin with? might as well go back to 3- less weight, less bulk.

howdy why do all of the 4-knot cowstails i see use figates for the top two knots? the idea of a 4-knot cowstail is redundancy.... so why use a knot you can't expansion-load as your redundant knot? if the bight fails, your line is now expansion loaded on a knot that can collapse under expansion load. the figure 8 also uses a lot of rope.. the knot that comes to mind, to me, is the alpine butterfly.. you can load any end and in any direction (so long as you don't expand the loop), and it uses less rope. and, if i'm not mistaken, the alpine butterfly is stronger than the figate. where's the error in my thinking? thanks

and that'll do it for me. thanks, again, for the help offered.

' "ahem," as though you're gonna take me back to school or something? how does any of the above contradict anything i've written? in the context of thin-walled, shock-loading, SOLO parts, casting is, in fact, extremely weak, relative to forging. i'm sure you (ambiguous) can engineer beautifully stout cast parts- my father did 10 years at Precision Cast Parts in portland. but in the current, applicable context, cast aluminum is not appropriate. and nobody is going to disagree with that.... so since that isn't your point, what IS your point?

why, and why?

Where ya been, man? Why does this surprise you? Ever seen a BD Guide? It's cast. Ever seen a figure 8? Also cast. A Sticht plate? Take a guess. I could go on... Cast rope gear is nothing new. 9/16" tubular has a breaking strength of somewhere around 1,500 to 2,300 lbs. 8mm cord comes in around 2,900 to 3,200 lbs. How much do you weigh, man? I'm in mountain rescue, educated by Rigging for Rescue, and we routinely use 9/16" and 1" tubular webbing and 8mm cord in all our rigging systems. And we're operating with forces much much greater than your rappel kit will ever see. Ya need to know yer math... negative. you're confusing casting and forging. cast aluminum is extremely weak, and i'll bet a dollar you couldn't find a single piece of load-bearing cast aluminum equipment in modern production. cast metal parts have no structural plasticity. if you take a hammer to a piece of forged steel equipment, so long as you can still get it to link up to your harness/rope/carabiners/whatever, it's not going to break- ask me how i know. whack a piece of cast steel, and it'll likely just crack. ALL of the steel equipment we use in rope access/fall prevention/protection is forged. D-rings, carabiners, screw links, grabs, fig-ates, descenders, hooks, snap-links, anchors, etc, etc. and though i'm not in rescue, i'm willing to bet another dollar that ALL of the aluminum load-bearing equipment you use is forged. i would have made the same bet regarding steel equipment, except that i now happen to own a piece of cast steel equipment. but i bet it's extremely rare. as to my inhibitions regarding sport equipment- my "math" is just fine. i've done my share of bullshit OSHA-required coursework. it's not about break strength- it's about how much sawing/abrasion/heat/chemical exposure/etc it'll take to saw/abrade/melt/dissolve the equipment. bigger is always better, in this regard, and that's why we're not allowed to use sport equipment in RAFP. you'll NEVER see human weight bear on rope skinnier than 11mm, and for lifeline placement, 5/8-1", depending on the material, for a minimum 22kN rating. for webbing, you won't see anything less tha 1.5" tubular, and often 2", and 2" minimum for harnesses and seats. this as my background, i don't think it's irrational for me to be apprehensive. but i'm obviously pushing my fears aside and going with it- i DID use the v-twin, did i not? i've embraced a small pile of aluminum sport equipment, and i even bought a 10,3 climbing rope- ,7 smaller than the smallest rope i've ever used. i'm sure i'll get over it.

US Outdoor Store in downtown has them: http://www.usoutdoorstore.com/outlet/dmm-v-twin-belay-device.html?cvsfa=2293&cvsfe=2&cvsfhu=3134303533 thanks for the lead, man.. i went and grabbed one this afternoon. i took it over to RB and gave it a handful of fairly hard raps... didn't even get warm. mine is virtually flash-free... no sharp edges, no burrs. all the same, the teeth looked a little too aggressive for my liking, so i went ahead and whittled on 'em a little with some 150 grain and smoothed over the points a little. i actually havent looked at my rope yet, but it didn't feel like it was scraping it. my only problem is that it's cast... whats up with that?? maybe i just havent been paying attention, but i don't think i've ever seen cast rope gear. i love the versatility of all this sport gear, but i don't love how flimsy it all seems. 9/16" webbing for anchors? singling with <8mm? uh uh.

I don't usually rap at 30mph, do you? no- probably not. yet. but with this new semi-static, i gotta tell you, i sure have a lot less apprehension about really lettin it rip. either way, the V-twin seems to be the peace of mind i'm looking for. i'll try it for rapping, and keep the ATC for belaying. thanks gentlemen. i'll still be really interested to know if anybody has used the ATS, and what they think of it.

im liking what im reading about the v-twin. coming from the industrial size, i really don't have a problem with some steel gear.

sterling advertises the ATS as rappellable, but i cant find a single piece of evidence that it's ever been used in a hanging vertical wall rap. im sure it has, but that's apparently not what they had in mind. seems like it'd be good for heat like a figate, but way more versatile and controllable.. i've shied away from the racks thus far.. they just don't seem like much fun. maybe i'll see if anyone in my circle has one and try it. are they generally steel or aluminum? i did just watch a video on ATC and heat... according to these guys, and ATC can get up to 200-250 degrees during a long, fast abseil, which is way shy of the 460 degree melting point of nylon... but they were of the opinion that this was still hot enough to damage rope. not melt it off and drop you, but screw up the core somehow. http://www.topclimbing.com/general/episode-9-can-a-rappel-device-burn-through-my-rope/

new to the sport end of things, i've only been using an ATC for a couple of months now. i do quite a bit of rappelling... not fancy "extreme" rapping, but i like to get on it some and try new stuff. i've noticed this is chewing up my new ATC pretty quick. i've also noticed it gets hotter than i'm used to a rap device getting. inspecting a pretty new (3 months) length of Edelweiss semi-static last night, it seems like the sheath is wearing faster than i'd like. i'm diligent with rope guards, so i have to wonder if excess heat is prematurely aging it...? whatever the case... even if i don't saw through the ATC or melt my line on a long, fast rap, i'm thinking maybe the ATC should be relegated to belaying and rappels-incident-to-climbing, and try something else for dedicated rapping. now that i've been introduced to the world of new fangled fancy sport gear, i'm not going back to the figure 8. so my questions- are my heat concerns with the ATC valid? anybody used the Sterling ATS, and what do you think? would another dual-purpose device work better than the ATC? what about the reverso? what other non-tail-coiling devices should i look at for dedicated rappel? thanks

i don't even leave my boots up top. everything comes down but the bathmat rope guard.

i've only communicated with two people there so far.. one was an american kid interested in climbing routes, which i couldn't tell him much about.. but i pointed out the trail and bolts and never saw him again (maybe his body is still lying at the bottom of the wall?). the other was a kid at the bottom taking pictures of us rapping down. i waved.. he waved back enthusiastically. he tried to climb up the mud slope, presumedly to talk to us, but wiped out 5 or 6 times before giving up and heading back to the trail. he might have been russian... american kids usually don't wave "enthusiastically." american kids usually aren't enthusiastic period. anybody have a theory about the rubbers? 95% of them don't look used... unless these guys have sooper small peckers. are they getting them for free at the college and just throwing them all over the place for fun...? or do you 'spose there's really THAT much poon bangin going on up there?

well it was plenty dry a couple weeks ago. it stayed wet last year likely because we had such a ridiculously wet spring. other rocks would dry out by morning, but, as somebody pointed out, a norte facing rock will take longer. and i can see how mosquitoes could be an issue down there... bobby and i already have bites. false spring brought them all out, but if we can get another decent freeze, it should kill the fuckers off and give us a relatively GOOD mosquito season this time around. last year was utterly ridiculous everywhere. i cant tell you how much gear i ruined with DEET.

what's the name of the line that tops out above the ranger tab?