Tool Dip on Wired Widgets

[catbirdseat]

I noticed some people with wired nuts that had a plastic coating on the eye where the biners is clipped. What's the idea behind that? Is it to prevent scratching of the carabiner, or to reduce catching on the nose slot? I can't imagine it would allow one to safely girth hitch a sling directly to the eye as the diameter is still rather small.

[lummox]

it is meant as a chafe guard. and to add pretty color.

[lancegranite]

Marketing?

[catbirdseat]

I have some ancient hexes with galvanized wire. On some of them, they put some plastic tubing on the eye before they swaged the cable. With something like that, I imagine you COULD sling directly to the eye.

[kurthicks]

you can girth a spectra runner onto a wire without worrying about the runner failing. bluewater did some testing on this and the wire breaks every time. goes a bit against conventional though, doesn't it? that aside, it could help to pick the right size when you're sketching.

[arlen]

My nuts have that. [insert seventh grade humor here] The plastic makes more friction on the biner, so it's harder to slide them around. I guess the grip is a little more positive while placing them.

[snoboy]

I think it's supposed to be colour coding.

 

The Metolius nuts I bought had that, and it really sucked. It makes them harder to slide around on the biner when you are trying to pick a size off, so I cut it all off.

[slothrop]

My HB offsets have it. It's harder to color-code brass by anodizing . I like the colored stuff for the same reason I like my Smiley nuts: faster identification of sizes.

[marylou]

Abrasion (and hard bends/kinking) are a major enemy of wire rope.

[Dru]

My HB offsets have it. It's harder to color-code brass by anodizing . I like the colored stuff for the same reason I like my Smiley nuts: faster identification of sizes.

 

i electroplated all my nuts and cams with 14k gold leaf to match my gold tooth

[catbirdseat]

Gold leaf and electroplate are two different methods. You should know that, Dru.

[MysticNacho]

Let Dru do what he wants to his nuts.

[Dru]

Gold leaf and electroplate are two different methods. You should know that, Dru.

 

you are so easy to hook it's almost not sporting

[catbirdseat]

The good old post-gaff pseudotroll.

[Dru]

the old "you hooked me good so I'm gonna pretend your troll was a deliberate mistake" counterploy

[Off_White]

The first time I saw this was on a first generation RP, and they weren't color coded at that time.

 

While I find color coding really useful for cams, I've always done alright with visually matching nuts to the placement, so the color coding nuts doesn't do much for me. My rack is a motley assortment of things, very few factory slings on cams, it's like speaking a private language. Consequently, I find leading with someone else's rack is more challenging than working with my familar tools.

[rbw1966]

Tool dip will not keep moisture out and may hide rust.

[chelle]

The color coding quickly lets me sort my HB offsets to make sure I end up with the same number I started out with when sorting out the rack after a day of climbing. The little numbers wear off and I know what colors and how many I have.

 

I don't like it on my metoluis nuts, but then I don't like them either so they sit in the bottom of my box of gear.

[JoshK]

I figured it was mostly for identification. I have the metolius nuts and I too find it obnoxious. They are much harder to slide around on a biner when you are trying to pick one.

[EWolfe]

We all know who the tool dip is around here

 

 

[thrutch]

Actually tool dip is a good thing to coat the Black Diamond trigger wires with. Not alot is needed just a small amount where the swage takes places. I only say B.D. as I have found their trigger wires to be class-A certified junk.

 

A couple ides to why they break. One is that the swaged cable is too short and the metal piece too long, it does't allow for enough play. The other I place on myself and think that I need to be a bit more firendly to them when I pack them.

 

Either way tool dip adds a small bit of longgevity.

[catbirdseat]

Tool dip might be a way to deal with meat hooks on trigger wires.

[snoboy]

thrutch, if you made the cable longer, and the stiff wire shorter, then the swages would catch on the edges of the cams when they were opening up...

[thrutch]

Not totally true, look at both the WC and Metolious cams and they both have shorter stiff wires then the BD. In 10+ years of service I have only had one tcu wire break and it was more from a faulty swedge then cable faliure and one friend trigger wire break. Whereas I am nearing the point of purchasing a hand swedger just to fix BD trigger wires. Though I have purchased some tool dip like matrial and have started to coat the trigger wires to prevent some fraying.

[Figger_Eight]

I dip my tool as often as I can.