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General Climbing Discussion

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OmegaPacific biners - a word of warning 23-Sep-2005 At 12:47:39 AM michaellane

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Hello, Everyone …

Thanks to everyone for showing concern over this issue. We’ve spent a lot of time discussing it and conducting extensive testing on our Jake as well as several other HMS & master/belay-type carabiners on the market and are happy to share our results and conclusions:

Our intention was to determine three things:

1) If minor-axis loading was possible
2) To identify any contributing factors to shredding ropes when loaded in this manner
3) How the Jake compared to other biners when ropes were dragged across the back of the gate

In addition to the Jake, we tested six competing carabiners (other brands are intentionally not revealed in this report or accompanying photos) in a similar manner as the previous poster. We set the ‘biners up so that rope could be dragged back and forth across the back of the gate with approximately 100 pounds of force until failure and noted the number of strokes necessary to produce a core shot (failure of the sheath to reveal the core).

In this test, the lowest-performing (quickest to produce failure) ‘biner took 8 strokes before we got a core shot. Others took 11, 17, 18, 21 & 33 strokes before the rope was wrecked. The Jake required 36 strokes before failure.

In the field, we belayed toproped and lead climbers alike with the various carabiners to get a feel for whether any had a greater tendency to flip and become cross-loaded than any other. While not as reproducible or objective as our lab tests, we felt this was worthwhile to refamiliarize ourselves with how other brands compare to the Jake in real-world use.

In that testing, we found that while toproping, it was consistently easier to maintain proper loading (along the major axis) for all brands. When belaying a leader, all the carabiners tested have some tendency to rotate and become cross-loaded due to the more dynamic action of paying out slack and taking in rope as required of a leader. None were particularly more prone to it than any other.

However, when clipped into both tie-in points of the harness, as opposed to being clipped into the belay loop, the tendency to rotate and become cross-loaded increased significantly, regardless of brand.

We carefully inspected all the carabiners and noted several factors which contribute to the occurrence of shredded ropes. The way the back of the gate is formed and finished (whether it was an “open” style or “hooded” style) and the manner in which the rivets were finished (whether rounded, sharp or flush with the gate) appeared to be the most significant factors. Less significant factors were the radius of the top edge of the locking sleeve and protrusions from the interior of the frame into the “working area” of the carabiner.

The Jake specifically addresses each of these factors within its design: we build all the solid gates of our climbing carabiners with an interior hood to prevent exposure to sharp edges; our flat-spin riveting process helps to keep the rivet heads from ripping open the sheath; the interior of our frames are smooth and our gate sleeves are made with wide radii on the top edges.

These features contribute to the results of our testing which shows the Jake to be among the safest of all the belay carabiners tested.

Still, as some in this forum have suggested, the most vital factor to prevent this from happening lies with the user. Every climber must ALWAYS pay attention to their ‘biner and how it’s oriented during use. Failure to do so may result in cross-loading and a shredded rope, regardless of which brand or style of carabiner is used.

We recommend that rappellers and belayers clip into the belay loop of their harnesses rather than the tie-in points. Although it does add another “link in the chain,” the belay loop is the strongest point of virtually any harness and contributes to more consistent, proper loading of carabiners.

As I’ve said in a previous post, we take these issues very seriously and put significant resources into making sure our ‘biners are among the safest and best-tested ‘biners in the world. This attention to detail has contributed to the tremendous success of the Jake carabiner.

In the eight years since we introduced this ‘biner, it’s become one of the most popular of its kind with over half a million sold to climbers, arborists and rescuers the world over. Historically, we’ve had incredibly few returns for any reason on this biner … much less than a fraction of one percent, in fact.

I hope this addresses the concerns presented here. Please feel free to contact us at info@omegapac.com at any time.

Thanks again for the time and interest you’ve all put into this.

Regards,

--Michael Lane