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General Climbing Discussion

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Carrot failure @ Muline 24-Nov-2013 At 5:19:37 AM Jim Titt

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On 23/11/2013 mikllaw wrote:
>these are identical to the bobby pins used at the freezer and Bow Wall.
>Not great in soft rock (too flexible) but fine in good rock

We don´t see any problems with the 8mm rod bolts in soft sandstone BUT normally recommend customers go for a 10mm or 12mm single shaft bolt anyway if it´s that soft and gets fallen on a lot, they thinner bolts don´t fail but the rock cracks away below them which looks a bit worrying..
There is no ideal solution for sandstone, mechanical bolts always seem to give problems in the end (we´ve installed 16mm ones and even they still move a trace which means they will probably come loose sometime). Glue-ins are the way to go but aren´t easy to change (though considering the effort involved in bolting a route first time it´s hard to see why replacement should be particularly easy!). Glued-in machine bolts with hangers are basically rubbish long term as the hangers come loose.
One solution is to use glued inserts and then bolt on hangers, we did this at a sandstone quarry with some custom stainless inserts glued in to spread the load (16mm hole and 120mm deep) but it´s still more work and cost than actually replacing a glue-in every now and then.