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Hi all, I'm trying to drill into the history of ice screws and significant developments over the years. I'm aware of a lot of the early history, with barbed ice pitons in europe, early versions of Warthogs being copied from Eastern Europe and produced by Salewa,he corkscrew Marwa type screws, Salewa Tubular Screws, Lowe Snarg style pound-ins, Russian Irbis Titanium screws, Chouinard importing European offerings early on and then producing more refined versions etc, the LOWE R.A.Ts screws which were the first aluminium screws I'm aware of and were a pretty decent screw by all accounts. I'd be really interested if anyone has any specific source material that can place actual dates any of these were first produced though, old catalogs, magazine references or Alpine journals and the like? I'm struggling trying to place who first added an integrated handle to an ice screw? I'm aware Chouinard developed a ratchet system, and there were some aftermarket crank handles developed for turning in ice screws. Does anyone know who actually first produced an ice screw with a handle attached though? From what I can tell it looks like either Black Diamond with a patent for a foldable handle in 1997 and their Express ice screws, or Smiley's who appear to have had a non folding ice screw around the same time. Does anyone have any ideas of which came first? Any earlier ice screws with a built in handle? Would be really interested to hear from anyone with any other info, opinions on significant developments, such as the first ice screw with 4 teeth (I think the early Salewa Tube screws had 2? Interestingly I notice the new Blue Ice screws have 3 teeth rather than the more standard 4 on most ice screws these days. I'm also after some examples if anyone has any old bits lying around gathering dust. Particularly after a Chouinard ratchet if anyone has one they would be willing to part with for a reasonable amount of money. Thanks, Stu