• The SH Membership has gone live. Only SH Members have access to post in the classifieds. All members can view the classifieds. Starting in 2020 only SH Members will be admitted to the annual hunting contest. Current members will need to follow these steps to upgrade: 1. Click on your username 2. Click on Account upgrades 3. Choose SH Member and purchase.
  • We've been working hard the past few weeks to come up with some big changes to our vendor policies to meet the changing needs of our community. Please see the new vendor rules here: Vendor Access Area Rules

A fall noted on facebook. A comment I saw.

I don’t use Facebook, but had someone send me this and I looked through the Facebook page. I saw some scary scary stuff. One guy was using 7/64 amsteel with knots tied into it on his sticks. People are gonna get hurt bad doin this stuff
 
I don’t use Facebook, but had someone send me this and I looked through the Facebook page. I saw some scary scary stuff. One guy was using 7/64 amsteel with knots tied into it on his sticks. People are gonna get hurt bad doin this stuff

Was it the 7/64 amsteel or the knots that scared you? A lot of people use 7/64 with spliced daisy chains.
 
This reminds me, although I am currently using beast sticks, I bought a set of the hawk helium 20” sticks a few months ago. I also bought amsteel 7/64 daisy chains. This was going to be my secondary set of sticks. I tested the hawks on a tree in my yard. I recall one of the sticks did kick out, but not so much that it came out and up. I didn’t feel I was in any real danger. I believe I still had a foot on the stick above. I just used my foot to straighten it up and pushed down on it to reset. I have never had a stick kick out on me before. I wrote it off that maybe I didn’t set it firmly enough or it could have been because the tree was a smoother hard bark tree. Looking at the hawks, that stand offs are pretty narrow compared to other sticks. I’m not knocking the hawks, just an observation. This and the incident above makes me a bit concerned about using them with the daisy chains.

Just today, before I read all this, I had removed the amsteel daisy Chains from the Hawks and put them on my beast sticks. I was running the web daisy chains on the beast sticks. Maybe I should reconsider. I haven’t had an issue with the web daisy chains on the Beast sticks. But maybe a daisy chain is a daisy chain.
 
This reminds me, although I am currently using beast sticks, I bought a set of the hawk helium 20” sticks a few months ago. I also bought amsteel 7/64 daisy chains. This was going to be my secondary set of sticks. I tested the hawks on a tree in my yard. I recall one of the sticks did kick out, but not so much that it came out and up. I didn’t feel I was in any real danger. I believe I still had a foot on the stick above. I just used my foot to straighten it up and pushed down on it to reset. I have never had a stick kick out on me before. I wrote it off that maybe I didn’t set it firmly enough or it could have been because the tree was a smoother hard bark tree. Looking at the hawks, that stand offs are pretty narrow compared to other sticks. I’m not knocking the hawks, just an observation. This and the incident above makes me a bit concerned about using them with the daisy chains.

Just today, before I read all this, I had removed the amsteel daisy Chains from the Hawks and put them on my beast sticks. I was running the web daisy chains on the beast sticks. Maybe I should reconsider. I haven’t had an issue with the web daisy chains on the Beast sticks. But maybe a daisy chain is a daisy chain.
The problem is not the sticks. People aren’t setting the chains right. The 30” you can get away with setting the chains incorrect because of the length of the stick but not the 20”
 
The problem is not the sticks. People aren’t setting the chains right. The 30” you can get away with setting the chains incorrect because of the length of the stick but not the 20”
Please share your recommended procedure for setting the 20” stick. Thank you.
 
Please share your recommended procedure for setting the 20” stick. Thank you.

The 20” gets super solid when you set the sticks like I do in this video. @Zacrowsl method he posted the video on looks good too but I haven’t tried it yet. I have an idea for another method of attachment I will be working on when I get back home too.... stay tuned....
 

The 20” gets super solid when you set the sticks like I do in this video. @Zacrowsl method he posted the video on looks good too but I haven’t tried it yet. I have an idea for another method of attachment I will be working on when I get back home too.... stay tuned....
Thank you. Saw this video and that’s pretty much how I do it. I will admit, these are my first set of amsteel daisy chains, so I am getting acclimated to them.
 

The 20” gets super solid when you set the sticks like I do in this video. @Zacrowsl method he posted the video on looks good too but I haven’t tried it yet. I have an idea for another method of attachment I will be working on when I get back home too.... stay tuned....
This works and works well. But I will admit that on sticks with very sharp standoffs it can be a pain. I never could get consistent with it bec the top standoff would bight before I could turn it. But I agree this is the best method if you are using straps as intended
 
This works and works well. But I will admit that on sticks with very sharp standoffs it can be a pain. I never could get consistent with it bec the top standoff would bight before I could turn it. But I agree this is the best method if you are using straps as intended
I’m gonna try when I get home a new method based on yours that uses a rope style instead of daisy chain.
 
I was asking if there was a better method or method I wasn’t aware of. I agree speed takes a back seat to safety.
Right - always good to be on the lookout for better methods, and also to double-test things while climbing, assume things are gonna fail (and make it a point to put them in position fail gracefully).

"Graceful failure" is why I like bolts (even "risky" carbon ones) and squirrelsteps. You're alternating between new supports each step (so if something fails, your other foot is in position to recover), and your supports are positioned such that they are unlikely to gut you like a deer (but are likely to catch a lineman's belt if things go sideways). You're also naturally closer to the tree with less slack in your lineman's belt - damn near a shimmy.
 
Back
Top