And on that note did you know Home Depot and some of the big box brethren carry Notch products now. Now that's an lol for keeping up the appearance of safety.
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Not meaning to open a can of worms - cross loading carabiners
- Thread starter CharlieTN
- Start date
I just happened to watch that video last night.
That guy goes to great lengths to test the breaking point of all sorts og climbing gear.
Most of the point of failure are well beyond what we exert as stand hunters but it's imperative that we understand the factors and then make our own risk assessment.
yeah he is hilarious! those highlines are crazy
Please don't take this as a recommendation of "best practices" but I have to admit, I use a large carabiner to provide the girth hitch for my rappel rope and my rappel rope only. I use a threaded steel link on my climbing and sitting tether.
Most all of the trees I hunt out of are much larger in diameter than the pins used in the "How Not2" tests shown here so there is less bending forces across the carabiner (i.e. most of the force application is in line with the carabiner). The la I also take care to make sure that I load the rope into the carabiner from above so that the spine of the carabiner is against the tree and I'm not loading the gate.
Why do this? I actually like the bigger opening and higher weight of the large carabiner in this application as it actually eases the retrieval process. Being more open there's less friction on the rope and, as everyone has experienced at some time with their tether, the additional weight of the carabiner will tend to open the girth hitch on its own when unweighted and it will start to drop itself down the tree. Also, in the rappel application the girth hitch will only ever see my body weight, there's no potential for additional shock loads as the rope is taut and steadily loaded the whole time I'm descending. I'm not going to pretend convenience doesn't weigh into this either. For me its simply more convenient to clip the rappel rope into a carabiner at the end of a hunt where my fingers may be cold and I'm trying to limit the contact time with more cold metal.
However, on my climbing/sitting tether I do use a threaded link. The reasons for that are that it is tighter closing and easier to lock
the rope in place with a small sliding Celtic knot. That keeps the girth hitch from loosening and sliding down the tree on its own when unweighted, something that happens regularly while one stick climbing or even shifting on my platform while hunting. Additionally, the strength of the link gives me a little more piece of mind if I should encounter a "slack line event" while climbing and end up shock loading my short tether.
Most all of the trees I hunt out of are much larger in diameter than the pins used in the "How Not2" tests shown here so there is less bending forces across the carabiner (i.e. most of the force application is in line with the carabiner). The la I also take care to make sure that I load the rope into the carabiner from above so that the spine of the carabiner is against the tree and I'm not loading the gate.
Why do this? I actually like the bigger opening and higher weight of the large carabiner in this application as it actually eases the retrieval process. Being more open there's less friction on the rope and, as everyone has experienced at some time with their tether, the additional weight of the carabiner will tend to open the girth hitch on its own when unweighted and it will start to drop itself down the tree. Also, in the rappel application the girth hitch will only ever see my body weight, there's no potential for additional shock loads as the rope is taut and steadily loaded the whole time I'm descending. I'm not going to pretend convenience doesn't weigh into this either. For me its simply more convenient to clip the rappel rope into a carabiner at the end of a hunt where my fingers may be cold and I'm trying to limit the contact time with more cold metal.
However, on my climbing/sitting tether I do use a threaded link. The reasons for that are that it is tighter closing and easier to lock
the rope in place with a small sliding Celtic knot. That keeps the girth hitch from loosening and sliding down the tree on its own when unweighted, something that happens regularly while one stick climbing or even shifting on my platform while hunting. Additionally, the strength of the link gives me a little more piece of mind if I should encounter a "slack line event" while climbing and end up shock loading my short tether.
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tailgunner
Well-Known Member
99.999 percent of saddle hunters dont know the difference between crossloading and cinching or anything about geometry in that case .you just shouldnt do things you dont know anything about when your life is litteraly on the line just to get a deer plain and simple...if you are risking your life just to get a deer as a hobbie you are already making bad decisions and its only smart to be responsable when doing irresponsables stuff.
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CharlieTN
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Does that make us all “experts” if we’re doing it that way?
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basically, even light, repetitive loads put a life span on aluminum whereas steel can take light loads over and over
tailgunner
Well-Known Member
Dont know
..but i would say the vast majority have no business leaving the ground simply judging by all of the injuries not to mention treestand deaths wich isnt even a factor in my state since very few blacktail or mule deer hunters climb trees ..im the only one i know personaly and people think im weard just for that.personaly im worried the average joe will break his leg cleaning his gutters and i dont want that so its just safer if i do it.i dont tell people to climb trees when they hunt....let alone do what i do....i just say what i do right or wrong and i just do stuff. so im not here to shame people who might feel nervouse doing what i do .thats just thier normal comon sence.however even if there was data to compare how many people got hurt cinching a tree with a carabiner to how many people where hurt when thier climbing stick kicked out people would still use,sell, and advocate using sticks.thats weird to me.
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tailgunner
Well-Known Member
This is never brought up when talking about the aluminium sticks or platforms that are not desighned by engineers though .
TreeRecon
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Provided you don't exceed the WLL or damage your carabiner, aluminum fatigue is a non issue
Agreed. Professional tree climbers put infinitely more wear and tear on carabiners compared to hunters. I don't think I've ever seen a picture on here of climbing gear that even looks broken in, let alone in danger of fatigue failure
CharlieTN
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I have a background in the climbing industry and I can tell you, what we do to our equipment is NOTHING compared to the abuse they dish out. I’m pretty much not worried about any of my gear as long as I reasonably care for it, inspect my ropes, knots, and webbing periodically, and the biggest thing is pay attention to what I’m doing while off the ground.Agreed. Professional tree climbers put infinitely more wear and tear on carabiners compared to hunters. I don't think I've ever seen a picture on here of climbing gear that even looks broken in, let alone in danger of fatigue failure
Not trying to derail the thread but I would agree with this entirely. As hunters, we're much more likely to encounter problems stemming from a sense of complacency rather than an actual gear failure. With complacency comes a lack of attention to detail that results in missed critical steps or outright mistakes.
It is important to inspect your gear and question your methods but its far more important to pay attention to everything you're doing each and every time you're in the tree.
I hear ya, I'm a retired Arborist myself. The good thing is that safety and using quality gear climbing is mainstream now, that wasn't always the case in the SH community to put it mildly. My personal opinion is that non-climbers have never seen or experienced a climbing accident happen before so they tend to picture equipment failure as likely source of an accident. For those of us that have had a mishap or seen it happen it's almost never equipment failure, it's almost always user error of one form or another.
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But why? Supposedly, weighting and unweighting aluminum over and over wears it out. Is this wrong or does it just take so long to occur that it would several lifetimes or something else?
It would take so long when used within design parameters. You can think of it as the number of load cycles till failure. As the load reduces, the number of load cycles it takes to break it increases exponentially. By the time you get down to the safe working load (WLL) it takes millions of cycles.
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What constitutes a load cycle? I'm thinking that loading and unloading a carabiner with your weight by fidgeting on platform, one sticking, etc. might be more cycles than a climber (where their 'biners are slack if they are climbing) or someone that just sits in the 'biner with constant tension. Maybe in a single hunt you load and unload your carabiner 1,000 times and that adds up. I get the sense that some of this might be "everyone thinks it is safe and we don't hear of failure due to this, therefore it must be wrong and I'm going to put legs under that notion by somewhat waving away the concern." It seems like there might be a bit of backwards argument making to tamp down a concern we might not want to have. That's what I'm starting to sniff out anyways. I'll have to do more research but without testing or a physics/engineering-level exposition, I just am not convinced one way or another.
TreeRecon
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I wouldn't worry about cycles to failure for metal. It's mostly used for nylons and textiles. If you don't exceed WLL of your carabiners, you will never experience a failure.
You would really have to intentionally do dumb stuff to exceed WLL on a carabiner. Example for hunting: You're 300lbs, you SRT up and your carabiner is canopy anchored across the minor axis. You can exceed WLL in that manner.
You would really have to intentionally do dumb stuff to exceed WLL on a carabiner. Example for hunting: You're 300lbs, you SRT up and your carabiner is canopy anchored across the minor axis. You can exceed WLL in that manner.
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But doesn't aluminum having no fatigue limit mean that any force can break it given enough cycles? I thought WLL was break strength with a safety margin built in, and so it address an acute risk versus a chronic risk. If you look at my google searches, a lot of them are bike riders. They are breaking thick aluminum pedal stems just by pedaling them with whatever force their legs can generate but over and over. Also, they are concerned that the constant flex on aluminum frames can do the same.
Why are our carabiners different from this?
Technical FAQ: Aluminum frame, crankarm fatigue
Lennard Zinn takes questions regarding how long aluminum frames and other bike parts should last before they fail.
velo.outsideonline.com
quote from link
"Aluminum does not have a distinct fatigue or endurance limit, so its S-N graph curves down from the upper left to the right and continues to curve down lower and lower toward the lower right corner of the graph. This illustrates that it will eventually fail even from low stress applications, given enough of them.
I of course have no way of predicting when your bike frame will fail; I only know that, since it is aluminum, it will eventually fail from fatigue, if it is ridden enough miles. "
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