curt@curtharler.com wrote:The moment you question the age or integrity of your rope, it is too old. In your heart, you know it's spent.
This sounds like a faith based approach to rope management. I'd prefer to use science.
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curt@curtharler.com wrote:The moment you question the age or integrity of your rope, it is too old. In your heart, you know it's spent.
Extremeophile wrote:NZcaver wrote:a friend with access to testing facilities is working on coming up with 'realistic' parameters for testing caving ropes (i.e. not slow-pull). He may appreciate receiving more samples to test, particularly if they have documented history of use.
Why is slow pull not realistic? I'm assuming you mean a test to failure. It seems like the only standard tests out there for rope are pull tests and drop tests. A pull test will give you a quantitative measure of the tensile strength of the rope, which seems to be the most useful for calculating safety factors for uses such as SRT or rescue hauling. I'm not sure exactly how to use drop test results for static rope. It seems that FF1 is typically used, but I wouldn't ever want to be subjected to a FF1 impact on a static rope. It also sounds like knot tightening and body squishing (I think that's the technical term) significantly reduce these FF loads. So if a rope survives 4 FF1 drop tests is that good? I really don't know how it helps me decide whether to retire a rope or not.
Extremeophile wrote:curt@curtharler.com wrote:The moment you question the age or integrity of your rope, it is too old. In your heart, you know it's spent.
This sounds like a faith based approach to rope management. I'd prefer to use science.
Cody JW wrote:A few years ago someone gave me 400 feet of 11 mil black Bluewater static rope. It was still on a bluewater spool and had a manufactured date on the edge of the spool 1998. All I have done is removed it from the spool and stored it in a canvass type military bag. If you are used to PMI this stuff feels very supple. I was hesitant to use it because I know most mfgr's. say 10 years for static rope. I also took into consideration that mfgr's have to draw the line somewhere to satisfy the lawyer types.
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