ek wrote:I also know there are a number of cavers out ther (not necessarily you) that "won't trust" 20kN-rated aluminum maillons... and yet they happily trust aluminum carabiners all the time. Never understood that.
Maybe they habitually leave their maillons open and are counting on steel because it tends to deform rather than shatter when overloaded.
I'm sort of one of those that prefer a steel maillon for a couple of reasons:
1. As you said steel tends to cope better with being bent without snapping.
2. Steel is tougher than aluminium so it will handle wear from descenders and chest ascender better than aluminium, if you don't think this happens look at the hole your maillon goes through on your Croll.
3. Steel will handle being dragged through the cave better than aluminium (not as soft) so less scratches.
4. You only have a single D maillon with no backup so for me steel is the more bombproof alternative.
5. Steel doesn't do funny corrosive stuff like aluminium can a steel mailon or krab would look awful before it looses much strength.
6. The weight differnce in overall terms is not huge.
7. Steel maillons are cheap and appart from the weight issue I think they are a better product.
Carabiners aren't generally being bashed around on my harness or ground into the rock they are inside a bag where they don't cop such abuse. I also carry 3 -4 steel maillons on my harness belt, again they are able to be bashed around and they're there if I ever need them, they are also small enough that they don't get in the way and are a comparable weight to carabiners.
With the doing the maillon up thing I have never forgotten to do it up, when I was first taught SRT I was told to do the maillon up straight away so that the threads don't spread (as well as other important safety related reasons) as a result as soon as it is clipped in to the harness loop I do it up all the way, I've never found my maillon hard to undo either, I do clean out the thread periodically when cleaning or bored and put some WD40 on it and wipe the excess off.
The way things are going I'd expect to be able to use my D maillon long after every other bit of vertical gear has worn out with the possible exception of my descender attachment maillon and brake carabiner (both steel)
<EDIT>I don't have a problem with Zircal aluminium mailions but I'd prefer a steel one.
Besides there's something reassuring about a heavy lump of metal