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OmegaPacific biners - a word of warning


gordoste

23-Sep-2005
3:53:11 PM

> I couldn't agree more, it will bring them onto my radar next time I'm buying gear!

definitely, and I reckon their nut tool is the best one out too!


Climboholic

25-Sep-2005
10:17:26 AM

I happy to see that we got a positive outcome. Knowing that OP take any safety concern seriously and do tests to check the validity of the concern gives me confidence to buy their products in the future.
Having said that, I wouldn't expect any less of a large company producing safety critical equipment. Just because we're down in a small southern corner of the world doesn't make out safety less important. Although stripping a rope to it's sheath would rarely be fatal (just scary).

ben wiessner

27-Sep-2005
1:51:56 PM

So it seems that the outcome of this thread is that the OP 'biners are fine, and the initial incident of the rope getting shreaded was due to "operator error" on behalf of the belayer at the time. A happy ending eh!

However I'm not happy with that outcome - no doubt in part because I was the belayer at that initial incident!

While I don't claim to be an infallible belayer, it may be worth noting that at the time of the incident I was actually being assessed by a member of the indoor climbing centre to be deemed competent to belay a lead climber at their centre. He was observing me and he never saw the biner slip such that it was crossloaded, it must have happened just as the leader took his practice fall (indeed he agreed that I had shown adequate skills and I passed the belaying test!). Although cross loading is essentially the fault of the belayer, this incident demonstrates that it can happen so fast that it may not be noticed (let alone rectified) until damage has been done, even if there is more than one pair of eyes on the belaying.

I don't think the results of the study run by Omega should be paid much attention: the potential for bias is massive! Let's be a little objective here huh!??

That said, good on em for taking it seriously. But I won't be buying any of those biners :)

citationx

27-Sep-2005
3:07:12 PM

As the person who took the initial fall, and the person who had been well aware of the tendency for the biner to crossload in the past, i'm quite disappointed at the findings of this test.
i'm going to do what i initially set out to do, to show the fundamental flaws in the design of this biner through photos and discussion. i was told i'd be contacted by OP, but they didn't get back to me. you'll notice in the photos shown of the other six brands that they are held in place by a very tight draw, forcing the biner to be crossloaded for the purposes of the rope-rubbing test. well der. (excuse my childish response, quite frankly that's all that i can think of).
you see if you can produce such a crossload using the other biners if it was freely hanging from your BELAY LOOP as it does so easily (and many times with me) when using the jake.
-steven-

patto

27-Sep-2005
3:52:42 PM

I agree with blue ben. I don't believe that the Jake biners are without fault. All Omega's testing showed was that some other biners also exhibit this fault.

I was rockclimbing recently, slighly comforted by OPs response I kept using my Jake with my belay device (Reverso). On more than one occasion the biner became crossloaded, I quickly noticed by the way it was feeding and corrected this each time. A couple times it even flipped 180 on me. The Jake does seem much much more prone to this than other biners.


shmalec

27-Sep-2005
4:23:02 PM

You gotta be sceptical about anything coming from the Sales and Marketing department. :)

I guess you either trust that the testers have done their job properly, a reasonable assumption, or you make decisions based on your own judgement and experience. Bit curious to know why the rope angles are so varied in the pictures and the load used was only 45kg.

I gotta say I'll be looking at these features carefully on the next biners I purchase and making a few decisions based on what I see.


dan

27-Sep-2005
6:17:44 PM

It's definatley a mover, mine has a tendancy to shift toward the gate. And I have on occasion looked down to find it upside down. There is a lesson in this, believe it or not it hardly moves at all when used upside down :).


sticky

27-Sep-2005
6:35:39 PM

On 27/09/2005 dan wrote:
>It's definatley a mover, mine has a tendancy to shift toward the gate.
>And I have on occasion looked down to find it upside down. There is a lesson
>in this, believe it or not it hardly moves at all when used upside down
>:).

Second that. I also have a Clog locker just like that, and a Faders that needs a lot of attention either way. I just get into the habit of feeling the biner after every large payout of slack, plus I tend to use my WC locker that has never tried to cross load on me, and use the Faders for anchor setups.

Does the type of belay device you use affect this? I noticed that I rarely got a sneaky unstable 'biner after switching to my new belay device, but maybe it's just cos I'm a better belayer now.

Kyle


Rich

27-Sep-2005
11:16:27 PM

yeh i reckon if those lockers with the plastic covers were cheaper, more ppl would be using them as they are definitely the go for belaying.. second to that are nice small ones.
OR just use a grigri then u got no probs ;)

catbird_seat

28-Sep-2005
7:11:59 AM

I'm a Yank and feel a bit out of place here, but I felt I had to respond with a tip on the Jake carabiner. I have used the autolocking version of this carabiner for years. I have noticed it's tendency to flip around when top roping. It is much more stable if you turn the carabiner so that the rope is running over the small end. You'll find that your friction is exactly the same but there less chance of cross-loading. I still strongly recommend that you pay attention to the orientation at all times.


Climboholic

28-Sep-2005
1:16:18 PM

On 27/09/2005 citationx wrote:
> you'll notice in the photos shown of the other six brands that they are held in place
>by a very tight draw, forcing the biner to be crossloaded for the purposes
>of the rope-rubbing test.

I think that's a really good point!
Omega Pacifics test avoided the weakness that the Jake has compared to other biner. It's tendancy to become cross loaded. It has been agreed by general consensus on this thread that many brands of wirelock biners have sharp edges. It is this, in combination with the jakes tendancy to cross load that causes the problem.
Should some more test by OP be in order?


Andrew_M

28-Sep-2005
2:20:09 PM

On 27/09/2005 Rich wrote:
>yeh i reckon if those lockers with the plastic covers were cheaper, more
>ppl would be using them as they are definitely the go for belaying

That'd be the DMM belay master. Looks a bit pricey for just a plastic sleeve, but works and well worth the money (IMO).


klareralt

28-Sep-2005
4:15:14 PM

On 28/09/2005 skip wrote:
:>Omega Pacifics test avoided the weakness that the Jake has compared to
>other biner. It's tendancy to become cross loaded. It has been agreed by
>general consensus on this thread that many brands of wirelock biners have
>sharp edges. It is this, in combination with the jakes tendancy to cross
>load that causes the problem.
>Should some more test by OP be in order?

From the OP test:

"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."

I think they did test it.... This would be extremely hard to test in an experiemental setting, though, just too many things to control for. So until someone manufactures a robot which can mimic belaying behaviour perfectly on repeated trails, this one is probably gonna have to be judged on gut feeling...

Personally I find that big screwgates are more prone to spin and crossload compared to smaller screwgates. So I stick to the small ones...


nmonteith

28-Sep-2005
4:21:13 PM

... get a gri-gri and all these dramas go away. I don't belay with anything else.. apart from long multipitch
routes where i want to save weight and need a double rope descent device.


Climboholic

28-Sep-2005
4:26:01 PM

On 28/09/2005 klareralt wrote:
>From the OP test:

Yeah, I did read that. I just though that was an extremely biased test.
As you said it's hard to test for.
If this thread has done nothing else, it has made people aware of the tendancy of the OP Jake to crossload, allowing us to make our own decision on using them.


dan

28-Sep-2005
6:29:18 PM

Get a Cinch, (easy for me to say as I have not already invested the $120)


Richard

29-Sep-2005
1:11:54 PM

>Personally I find that big screwgates are more prone to spin and crossload
>compared to smaller screwgates. So I stick to the small ones...

Considering the geometry of the loading forces, I would have thought the more oval the carabiner - ie the more parallel the long sides are, the more likley it would find or stay in a stable crossloaded configuration, while the more triangular the carabiner is, with the long sides at a significant angle to each other, the more likely a cross loaded biner would automaticaly re-orintate it's self to the correct position.

Not sure if this agrees with priactice, may be someone has some comments..


runnit

29-Sep-2005
2:54:38 PM

For anyone wanting a cheaper, nastier solution, once you clip the biner on your belay loop just clip a rubber band/hair band/anything stretchy and put it around the spine of the biner then twist it and loop it over the gate

I found it holds everything in place pretty nicely

There are 78 messages in this topic.