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General Climbing Discussion

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climbing and sunscreen 17-Nov-2003 At 9:41:19 AM The Blond Gecko

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I think I'll weigh in a bit here... Nylon 6,6 dissolves quite effectively in very strong acid (i.e. neat hydrochloric acid from the hardware store, about 10-15 mol/L, sulfuric (battery) acid at high concentration, etc...) At the acid concentrations required, the pH is off the normal scale (about -1). By comparison, phosphoric acid and vinegar have pH values of about 3-4 - they are much, much weaker acids, and hence would take a long time to cause any damage (if at all).
If you want to test all this yourself without wasting good rope and using really high forces, get yourself some monofilament fishing line (it's exactly the same stuff) and start testing it with different materials. Just remember that since fishing line is somewhat thicker than the fibres in a rope, you'll have to scale up the contact times somewhat to get the same effect. Having tried to dissolve nylon myself in the lab, I can testify that it is pretty much inert to every organic solvent (acetone, toluene, dichloromethane, chloroform, alcohols, etc.) I tried.