UKC

I was reading an article about lightweight gear and it got me thinking, nuts weigh an awful lot, so why not make them of say Nylon, you know the white stuff they make chopping boards and hammers from, particularly 5`s and up, I could even envisage in a fall, them gripping better, a bit like an rp, maybe you would need to replace more often as they may get chewed but well seated it could be a great option and be half the weight. Any comments.
Cheers sjc

In reply to sjc:
It has been tried (I think Gear4rocks make some) they seem like a great idea until you have to clean one out of a placement that has held a fall. Plastic nuts will deform a lot more than ally ones and I'm not sure that people will thank you for making classic crack lines look like a line of in-situ copperheads

In reply to sjc:

You can buy plastic nuts. Gear4rocks make them:

http://shop.gear4rocks.com/en/nuts-stoppers/plastic-nuts-set-of-eight/prod_...

There are also some threads on here about them (not many people seem to like them) so you might want to search the forums for them.

In reply to Reach>Talent:
Yes I can see that problem

In reply to sjc: Probably all true but I reckon there would be a large amount of 'give' which would, after a fall, make them almost impossible to budge...plus nuts arent really that heavy...

In reply to sjc: Old person here, I remember this being tried in the 70's, I even placed one or two borrowed from one of my working (and therefore wealthier) friends. This was a time when 'nuts were nuts' and they weighed a lot more than now and the weight difference would have been much greater.

They were rubbish, slipped out like they had grease on them. I'm sure someone will have a photo somewhere.

In reply to sjc: I think I remember my dad having some wooden nuts in the 80's. Surely they'd be equally as effective.

In reply to sjc:

As said nylon was tried back in the 70s but they didn't catch on as they tended to be difficult to get out after holding a fall, or so it was said at the time.

In reply to sjc: watch this and shit your pants: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mg5LOLsQGXQ&list=FLbvb6v3DcR73kUWkepd6Qd...

Lightweight nuts made of cord... mmmmmmmmmmm

In reply to Will Caesar: There was a large white plastic (nylon?) nut stuck on Central Groove at the Dewerstone last year, definitely hard to budge once seated. I can't believe they would be that trustworthy in the smaller sizes.

In reply to sjc: What about that shock-absorbing material, D3O? If the 'raw state' was made slightly less flexible this could work? *


* note: I know nothing about science and stuff

In reply to alexjz:

Same ethic as Elbanstein in Germany. Give it a try ! its certainly quite an exhilerating experience

In reply to alexjz:

Weren't they known as "Russian Friends"?

In reply to LastBoyScout: there's definitely an eastern european element to them...

Graham D... you used that as protection? any falls?

In reply to alexjz:

I did but I didn't dare fall ! A couple of German friends we had from the area seemed quite comfortable with the concept though - the rock does seem to lend itself to very knot friendly constrictions.

In reply to GrahamD: Parts of that video were actually shot in Elbsandsteingebirge. What the guys soloed was a classic diff to vdiff we also did on the 4Cs trip there.

Michael

Didn't MOAC make a plastic 'Original' in the 70's? I seem to remember some plastic Clog nuts too, but I may have imagined this ?

In reply to adam11: you didnt imagine it we used a red plastic Moac for a long time..

In reply to adam11:

There was deffo something call Nychocks way back then.


Chris

In reply to Steve John B:

Isn't this pretty much just a swishified version of cornflower custard?

In reply to nufkin:

An interesting concept though. The D30 Products web site says "D3O materials in their raw state flow freely when moved slowly, but on shock, lock together to absorb and disperse energy, before instantly returning to their flexible state." So if it held a fall it might then drop you afterwards. Perhaps such protection could be the basis of a purer climbing ethic than normal trad leading, i.e. you can fall but you can't rest?

In reply to sjc:

Aside from the issue of being hard to remove, I imagine that you would start to line cracks with a thin veneer of slippery nylon - not great for jamming friction

In reply to alexjz: here is a variation on your post, more knots as pro, good little film this, worth watching; TradAnnot
vimeo.com/41798206

In reply to sjc: I think Peck were a brand that made a hard Nylon chock. The one I used was a solid tube with tape through slots and it weighed less than the metal heaxagonal nuts -but all were blown away when Chouinard hexentrics arrived,

In reply to gd303uk:

In this one, I am slightly confused as to why the mix of friends and knots? I have climbed at Ostrava in the Czech republic, and knots were used as the rock was too soft for metal. If this stuff in Annot is solid enough to take friends, surely they could take normal nuts too? Is it just a cultural thing?

In reply to sjc:

There are a few problems in general with plastic nuts, the main ones being the change in properties with temperature. The standard for nuts needs to be rewritten to account for this, as current designs may not function adequately in either cold or hot conditions.

In reply to sjc: you'd never get them out on rock like here with lots of crystals. Limestone maybe, gneiss - not a hope. We can't even get metal ones out quite often!

The only plastic nut to have any success was made in Colorado by Bill Forrest in 1971 and called a Foxhead. It was blue and looked very much like a MOAC and was about the same sizebut it had a single wire ending in a swaged loop. I think I might still have one somewhere. Mammut also made a nylon nut in the early 1970's but it was badly designed and should never have been put on the market.

In reply to : Why nylon? Nylon is used in plain bearings sometimes because if its self lubricating properties. Intuitively I wouldn't therefore choose nylon but other materials may be suitable.

In the grand scheme of things the young's modulus of plastics is significantly lower than that of metals (although Aluminium is on the low end) a lower young's modulus means (rather simplistically) it is more prone to deformation. Good in terms of it could wedge into a crack nicely. But bad in the fact that once in the crack the amount of force required to overcome the deformation caused by a fall would be pretty hefty.

I could envisage nuts that have a central core where the wire attaches with significant chunks taken out of it, as the size gets bigger. So that the outer "surface area" stays the same but without all the excess metal sat inside.

Come to think of it, If I were in the final year of my design degree I would of done that instead. Ah well!

Someones already done that tho right?